The objective of the campaign was pure and simple: Drive same-store sales growth for Wendy’s by launching the Pretzel Bacon Cheeseburger in July 2013. Growth could be achieved by getting incremental visits from existing customers and by stealing customers from other fast food restaurants.

Wendy’s target audience is adult fast food lovers so it targeted them in all of their communications. Wendy’s also saw an opportunity to use digital to further engage Millennial consumers with the brand and begin to make it “cool” again as well as continue to grow its social following and generate earned media coverage.

They said it. We sang it.

To launch Wendy’s new Pretzel Bacon Cheeseburger, we encouraged consumers to tweet and post their love for the cheeseburger by literally singing their comments back to them as original love songs. Each week, new comments were collected, new love songs were scored, and a new video was produced and released online. Our grand finale even starred multiplatinum singer Nick Lachey. The primary goal was to get consumers to purchase the cheeseburger, share their love of it to their friends, and then gain fans and followers that you could interact with in the future.

Wendy’s calls the Pretzel Bacon Cheeseburger the most successful product launch in its history. Wendy’s reported a whopping 3.2% increase in same-store sales while the cheeseburger was in market. What’s more, the campaign generated 2 billion PR impressions. Even investors took notice, upping Wendy’s stock by 31%.

Pretzel Love Songs (PLS) also helped engage consumers in the brand overall. PLS reached more than 85 million eyeballs, and Wendy’s saw 7.8 million social interactions with PLS Facebook posts alone. It’s no wonder Wendy’s Facebook fans increased by 315,000 during the 60-day campaign and Twitter followers increased by 153,000.

When we scoured social chatter from the test markets, what we saw was clear: Virtual love letters about the cheeseburger on Twitter and Facebook.

Seeing these love letters inspired us to promote the PBC by collecting comments and singing them back to consumers as a series of music videos: Pretzel Bacon Cheeseburger Love Songs.

Taking an over-the-top, tongue-in-cheek approach to these love songs showed that Wendy’s takes its food very seriously, but not itself. We didn’t give away discounts, but instead gave away “virtual fame” by citing our biggest fans’ comments in our love songs.