What do you do when your most important consumer doesn’t want to be reached? In fact, they don’t want to be reached so much that they’re actually paying money to avoid being reached. Younger consumers have become experts at avoiding unwanted advertising, which is problematic when they’re the ones eating in the quick service restaurant category most often.

Wendy’s solution to this problem came in the form of audio product placement – a 5 song hip-hop mixtape called “webeefin?” that acted as a trojan horse for core brand messaging.

Our efforts went beyond merely reaching this audience, and instead built relevance, and behavior change. Consumers began to change their tune, and their behavior, and instead of actively avoiding and blocking advertising, they began to willingly consume and share our advertisement. Wendy’s blurred the line between advertising and entertainment as our hip-hop ‘advertisement’ topped music charts and spread from music streaming services to FM radio airwaves and broadcast media.