As a challenger brand in a crowded QSR field, with fewer marketing dollars than their major competitors, Wendy’s always needs to punch above their weight. Wendy’s shook up the fast-food category when they launched breakfast in 2020, but the challenges of introducing a new daypart during COVID-19 necessitated an ongoing focus throughout 2021 to aggressively drive consumer consideration and sales growth. Summer seasonality presented additional hurdles to creating purchase frequency within the breakfast business, since customers are often outside of their typical “routine” behaviors.

This Wendy’s campaign was intended to grow their breakfast business through scaled engagement of a passionate audience.

1. The top priority is year-over-year weekly sales growth.

2. Drive consideration for Wendy’s breakfast through engagement with fans.

3. Drive scaled awareness of Wendy’s breakfast through exposure to campaign assets with 250MM planned impressions across channels.

Rick and Morty crisscross the multiverse, popping in and out through interdimensional portals. Imagine the fan reaction if a portal opened up in LA, just prior to the global premiere.

Wendy’s wanted to grab the attention of Rick and Morty fans via spontaneous, breakthrough content that would both get them to try breakfast and fuse Wendy’s with Rick and Morty. A large activation was needed to make a splash, but with the ability to also entertain and engage audiences at national scale.

The interdimensional portal opened beneath a Wendy’s – and overnight it would be transformed into Morty’s – Cars entered via a 43’ inflatable Rick head and plunged through an animation experience, ordering Morty’s menu and Pickle Rick Frostys. Upon exiting the inflatable Morty, fans continued their Morty’s adventure on Instagram, Twitter, and TiKTok via exclusive content. An immersion that fans wouldn’t stop talking about, sharing, and posting.

In Wendy’s journey to become more than just a restaurant to our consumers and frame ourselves as a part of their lifestyle, Wendy’s constantly looks for ways to participate in our consumers’ lives. Wendy’s has seen huge business opportunity in showing up where are consumers are and doing integrations that make the experience better. Historically, we’ve found that in sports, gaming, and music, so when we found out that our consumer base loves the Emmy Award-winning show Rick and Morty, we went to work to find a way to collide these two properties in a way that would amplify both the Rick and Morty and Wendy’s experiences for our shared fan base while also converting rest-of-day Wendy’s consumers into Wendy’s breakfast consumers. That intersection was found in season five of Rick and Morty and at a drive-thru near you.

Morty’s immersed fans online and in real life, meeting them across multiple experience and installation touchpoints. The center of the collaboration was an extensive takeover of an actual Wendy’s, transforming it into a Morty’s restaurant.

Two massive Rick and Morty inflatable heads 43' high served as irresistible invitations but also functioned as tunnels for cars to drive under to enter a “portal” (drive-thru lane) that transported consumers into a interdimensional tunnel with 10' tall LED screens that immersed fans in an out-of-this world Wendy’s-inspired Rick and Morty experience.

The experience had even more to offer because Wendy’s and Rick and Morty created a program with total surround sound. While waiting to enter Morty’s for the Wendy’s Wubba Lubba Grub Grub Breakfast Menu, fans tuned in to a dedicated Rick and Morty radio station to play in their cars, and custom content pieces were created integrating Wendy’s characters into original animations.

The Morty’s installation achieved unprecedented demand as carloads of superfans traveled to wait up to 9 hours at our busiest times (approx. 2 mile line of cars)! Content from the event was captured and huge earned outreach cumulatively delivered massive impact of over half a billion multi-channel impressions (over 237MM had a 99% positive tone) extending far beyond the LA experience, giving it sustained social longevity at national scale.

Paid Social performed substantially above engagement and video view benchmarks across engagement and video views, and a parallel campaign further extended our partnership to Fandom to give fans more interactive Rick & Morty content through the Fandom 5 trivia show.

Wendy’s achieved success in the Breakfast daypart, with +120-140% increases in YOY breakfast sales, plus consistent increases in weekly average breakfast sales contributions to Wendy’s full day mix. Additionally, our intergalactic beverages we’re among the highest performing custom Coke flavors EVER!