Direct > Digital & Social

#SQUARESHAKES

GOODBY SILVERSTEIN & PARTNERS, San Francisco / SONIC DRIVE-IN / 2016

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Overview

Credits

OVERVIEW

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We teamed up with famous Instagram chef Jacques La Merde to create SONIC #SquareShakes—the world’s first product designed to be Instagrammed.

Everything from the glass each shake was served in to the shake’s ingredients to the cherry on top was square—perfect for Instagram’s iconic square format. The top of each shake was styled to look beautiful when photographed from above.

To launch SONIC #SquareShakes, we teamed with six Instagram-famous graphic designers to create packaging for each flavor. Each artist shared their shake on Instagram, capturing the attention of millions of followers— our Millennial design-conscious target audience.

We delivered the shakes instantly to people attending Coachella Music Festival by using their phones’ geolocations—the first time a brand had turned Instagram into a fast-food restaurant.

Execution

#SquareShakes were announced through targeted social to reach our Millennial audience. Over 16 days, on Instagram and Facebook, we leveraged influencer channels and light-touch paid media to distribute photographic assets, a campaign video and a PR “process” film starring @ChefJacquesLaMerde. Each asset teased the #SquareShakes launch at Base Camp in Coachella Valley.

On launch day geofenced Instagram ads appeared on the feeds of festivalgoers in the Coachella area, inviting them to order a Square Shake by pressing a Shop Now button.

This linked to a mobile site where each user shared their GPS location, name and a description of their outfit. This allowed us to deliver each shake minutes after receiving an order.

While our activation was small scale—just 250 handcrafted shakes produced and distributed over a five-hour period—its effect was large. Our tiny delicious cubes hijacked the Coachella conversation and made SONIC Insta-famous among our audience.

Outcome

78% of shakes served resulted in an Instagram post from customers. Over 650,000,000 impressions were earned. The campaign exceeded benchmark engagement rates on Instagram by 172%. It was so Instagrammable even Instagram Instagrammed it.

And despite a media and production spend of just $150,000, our campaign achieved an unprecedented cost per reach for SONIC of just 0.0002 cents.

We earned global media coverage in all the places our design-conscious Millennial audience cares about: VICE, BuzzFeed, MSN, Fortune, Bon Appétit, Fast Company, Food & Wine, Adweek, POPSUGAR, Delish, Seventeen and PSFK, to name a few. #SquareShakes became a trending topic on BuzzFeed. The conversation around #SquareShakes has been 100% positive on social media, with SONIC being praised by designers, foodies and hipsters alike.

But the most delicious part? #SquareShakes helped SONIC achieve one of the most successful product launches through PR and Social, (Creamery Shakes) in the company’s 57-year history.

Relevancy

SONIC #SquareShakes are the world’s first products designed to elicit a direct response from people through an Instagram photograph.

Not only did 78% of shakes served result in an Instagram post from one of our customers, but every shake was ordered through a button featured on a SONIC Instagram advertisement.

Put simply, customers responded to us not once, but twice—first, through our interactive Instagram advertising and second, by posting pictures of our #SquareShakes on the platform.

Strategy

We identified that our audience, food-adventure Millennials, turn to Instagram to find food inspiration, where there are over 178 million user photos tagged with #food.

But barely 1% of those photos were of fast food, and fewer than 0.00001% were of SONIC food—a fact that won’t surprise you if you try to take a good photo of your next takeaway burger or soda.

With this in mind and only 118,000 followers, we knew we needed a stronger presence on Instagram.

So we set ourselves a brief, to hijack Instagram, which informed every aspect of our campaign.

We partnered with one of the most famous chefs on Instagram to create #SquareShakes. We recruited six Instagram-famous designers to design the packaging. We hijacked Coachella, the most Instagrammed music festival in the world, by placing geofenced Instagram ads throughout the event area. And we allowed festivalgoers to order #SquareShakes directly through Instagram.

Synopsis

There are over 178 million photos tagged with #food on Instagram. But fewer than 0.00001% of these photos featured food from SONIC Drive-In—America’s most popular drive-in restaurant.

To make matters worse, eight out of the ten brands with the most Instagram followers are SONIC’s competitors—other fast-food restaurants.

Our goal was to encourage the millions of Millennials who share food photos on Instagram to share images of SONIC food too.

The problem was this: fast food simply wasn’t photogenic.

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