This campaign is an example of the power of bucking conventional wisdom – specifically in marketing a product falling quickly out of demand, and to look for success in places you would not otherwise look.

It also shows the power of connecting an insight into our target market (a turn to comfort food amidst a lack of social connection) with an insight into our product (lettuce grows better when spoken to positively). By doing that, we were able to generate significant interest and engagement with the campaign.

In 2019, Wendy’s took significant steps to bolster its salad product quality by investing in a new type of lettuce. The new lettuce was more sustainable, better tasting, and 100% grown in Canadian greenhouses. They planned to launch during the seasonal upswing in salad demand between Q1 and Q2, when people become more aware of the need to eat healthier in anticipation of the summer.

The launch campaign had four main objectives:

Objective #1 - Increase core salad sales by 7.5% YoY.

Objective #2 – Increase same-restaurant sales by 3% YoY.

Objective #3 - Increase share of QSR salad nationally by 10% - from 12.5% market share to between 13.5% and 14%.

Objective #4 - Increase brand sentiment on Twitter to 28% positive share of sentiment.

We had to understand why people were turning to comfort food. We found that it wasn’t so much the taste of comfort food, but the positive emotions people felt when eating it. Research shows that people are more likely to engage in emotional eating and food consumption when their psychological needs, particularly needs for social connection, are unfulfilled.

But at a time where people couldn’t be physically closer, being virtually closer wasn’t helping. In fact, Canadians were reporting that social media was actually making things worse. 71% of Canadians believed people to be more hostile and negative on social media.

If people were turning to comfort foods because of a lack of social connection, perhaps we could use this insight to craft a campaign that fostered positive social connections while somehow simultaneously imbuing our new salads with the positive emotions associated with comfort foods.

In our research, we came across a study that showed plants also benefit from social connection. They grow better when consistently spoken to, especially when spoken to in a positive voice.

We realized there was a tremendous opportunity to intersect the benefits of positive social connection to both plants and people in a way that could drive significant attention and engagement around Wendy’s new Greenhouse Grown Salads.

So, we connected with Dr. Tijana Blanusa, Principal Horticultural Scientist at Britain’s Royal Horticultural Society to determine everything we needed to know to make our lettuce happier.

We determined the time, frequency, and distance from which we should communicate with the plants for the best result. We even set up the parameters of a scientific study to determine effectiveness. With one side of the greenhouse acting as control (i.e. not receiving any messages of love).

We wanted to spread positivity online and in our greenhouse. We launched a social campaign featuring social videos and posts that encouraged Canadians to use the hashtag #GrownWithLove, to tweet messages of love and support to our greenhouse lettuce that we read out to the plants as they grew. We then shared back to people a video of their tweet being read to the lettuce. We even used TV ads and a Twitter Spotlight takeover to push Canadians to talk to our lettuce.

We held a live ‘lovestream’ on Twitter, where we read out chat messages of love to our lettuce in real time.

After our lettuces had their fill of love, they were harvested and sent on their way to Wendy’s locations across Canada, where we made special packaging featuring some of the messages shared with the lettuce. We shared the unique packaging on our social media feeds.

Please see results in Confidential Information for the Jury.