Pretzel Love Songs appeared nationally in the United States in July 2013. Branded entertainment has become mainstream in this country, especially on social networks such as Facebook and YouTube. As a result, consumers can often recognize branded entertainment when they see it. Because of this savviness, it has become harder than ever to break through the clutter to get consumers to take notice. After all, there are millions of other pieces of content that are competing for consumers’ attention every day.

Some brands choose to make purely entertaining content that ignores the brand itself. Others make the mistake of creating long-form commercials that forget to be entertaining. Striking the right balance between entertainment and branding while influencing consumer behavior is what brands are striving for, but few achieve this goal.

We created two videos to be posted on Facebook and YouTube.

In the first video we 'unknowingly' mispronounced 'brioche' before our customers could. We cast a refined, over-the-top aristocrat who was able to speak eloquently about anything except the proper pronunciation of brioche.

We waited patiently for the chatter and it came quickly. We pounced on it through always-on community management, interacting with our fan’s social conversations and making sure to never give anything away while still furthering the joke.

Then we released a second and final video 'attempting' to resolve the deliberate blunder, fueling even more conversation, sharing and sales.

People became so comfortable ordering Wendy’s new Portabella Mushroom Melt on Brioche that the sandwich exceeded sales goals every week. In fact, the sandwich’s sales were nearly 70% higher than expected the week the first video launched. What’s more, the video had over 3 million video views and 7 million post engagements.