#ChickenWars started when a strategic, two-word, unpaid tweet sparked “one of the most successful fast-food product launches ever,” sold a 10-week supply of Popeyes Chicken Sandwiches in eight days and forever changed the brand.

And it didn’t happen by chance. Popeyes “instant” success was a year in the making as we market-tested our sandwich and cultivated our fanbase, particularly among Black Twitter, a highly influential, hyper-creative group of Twitter users. Without that strong strategic foundation, Popeyes wouldn't have been in the position to capitalize on this opportunity when we launched the new Chicken Sandwich.

Our brief include four objectives:

1 — Awareness. We wanted to build hype around Popeyes Chicken Sandwich and make it wildly famous. Popeyes wanted to generate five billion earned impressions in 2019 and hoped this would contribute significantly.

2 — Change perception/behavior. We wanted to increase new customers beyond our older (Boomer) core fans who comprised 42% of customers but only ate Popeyes as an occasional treat. We targeted two younger growth audiences (fast-food-loving families and trend-following suburbanites) and put emphasis on Black Twitter. Black Twitter overlapped and connected both our core and fast-food-loving families and often started trends suburbanites followed. So if we appealed to Black Twitter, everything else would fall into place.

3 — Spur trial with a goal of 75 units sold per day (average), per restaurant.

4 — Finally, increase Same Store Sales by 5% and add $265 million in system-wide sales.

Historically, Popeyes focused on its core fans, an aging group with a strong Black, urban skew.

New segmentation revealed a huge market opportunity among young, fast-food-loving families. Fifty-five percent identified as Black or Hispanic, similar to Popeyes’ core fans. They were passionate about fast food, engaged in popular culture and highly active on social media. Like our core fans, they overlapped with Black Twitter, making that group key to Popeyes’ success.

Another new segment was suburban trend-followers in their 20s/early 30s who wanted to seem in the know about fast food.

Both new groups ate chicken sandwiches far more than average. And being younger, they leaned more progressive, making them easier to snatch away from conservative Chick-fil-A.

We immediately saw opportunity for a ripple effect: If Black Twitter and other fast-food lovers created culture-driving social conversation, the trend-followers would adopt and amplify it.

The year before #ChickenWars, we spent time listening to Black Twitter and building relationships with these incredible creators. At Brandweek, Twitter’s Global Director of Culture and Community, God-Is Rivera, spoke about Black Twitter’s impact on #ChickenWars. “Black Twitter is not a traditional, targetable media audience,” she said. “If you don’t know Black Twitter, you can’t find Black Twitter.” Luckily, Popeyes knew Black Twitter.

Rivera said that too often brands “talk at” people, but “Popeyes did a great job of listening first and really starting to understand this audience. It was great to see Popeyes kind of sit back and let the audience speak for them.”

Creating a “believe the hype” campaign based on tweets and user-generated content from fans in sandwich test markets allowed us to act quickly and wisely when Chick-fil-A tweeted. Our audience was ready for us to hit Chick-fil-A, but we had to be true to Popeyes.

When Popeyes launched its new Chicken Sandwich, they were the underdog in a category dominated by Chick-fil-A.

But Chick-fil-A was a guilty pleasure for many people who disagreed with their conservative, anti-LGBTQ stances. We’d been listening carefully on social, so we knew the right tweet could unleash an army.

We just needed the right moment.

Buzz was okay when the sandwich went nationwide. Many fans tweet about it being better than Chick-fil-A’s, but it wasn’t a viral hit.

Then…

A week later, Chick-Fil-A tweeted: “Bun + Chicken + Pickles = all the [heart emoji] for the original.”

We quickly responded with a perfectly on-brand “...y’all good?”

Popeyes didn’t just get lucky. We’d put in the time to perfect our social voice and build a very engaged fanbase on Twitter. We knew exactly what to say and when to pounce to make the internet go crazy.

And it worked.

—Popeyes sandwich went from 4,000 to 140,000/day.

—8 billion impressions worth $87 million.

—More new Twitter followers that week than past 2.5 years.

—Visit market share +30% — the largest ever tracked by Sense360.

—Store traffic +256% initially, +300% for sandwich’s return and stabilized at +40%.

—Visit frequency among lapsed/new guests + 153%.

—New customers were younger and wealthier.

—Overtook McDonald’s as second-most craved brand in suburbs.

—“Word of Mouth score” hit a record high.

—Sold out of its entire 10-week sandwich supply in 8 days.

—Sales 16x more than projected.

—Best quarter in two decades (6x better than preceding two quarters).

—Over the next year, sales stabilized at 285 sandwiches/day — almost 4x our goal.

A Bloomberg article about Popeyes global growth through the pandemic stated: “many have credited what has to be one of the world’s most valuable social media posts for starting this.”

"Y'all good?" is a way of asking if someone is okay but also subtly implying that they are not okay.

It a common way of speaking in the South (where Popeyes is from) and in African-American Vernacular English.

It's an insult disguised as niceness, which made it the perfect response and spurred our audience to jump in with their own commentary.