Wendy’s: Grown with love

Source: Institute of Practitioners in Advertising, IPA Effectiveness Awards,

Entrant, 2022
Downloaded from WARC

Wendy’s, a fast-food restaurant, drove its salad proposition in Canada during the pandemic with a
targeted social media campaign that delivered growth in sales and category share.

Before COVID, the QSR chain was planning to differentiate itself by growing its salad offering,
driving new revenue and indicators of quality, but lockdowns led consumers to eschew salads in
favour of comfort food.
Wendy’s paired the insight that comfort food was a substitute for social contact with research
suggesting that plants also benefit from social interaction.
To save its marketing strategy and tonnes of pre-ordered stock, Wendy’s targeted ‘salad fanatics’
– skewing young, female and online – with #GrownWithLove, a social media campaign that read
messages of support aloud to greenhouse lettuce, as well as incorporating them onto Wendy’s
salad packaging.
The campaign resulted in a large increase in Wendy’s share of positive sentiment on social, a
growth in salad sales of 16% and an additional 2.5% of QSR category share.

Campaign details
Brand: Wendy’s
Advertiser: Wendy’s Restaurants of Canada
Entrant: McCann Canada
Category: Single Market
Principal author: Liam Brown, McCann Canada
Contributing author: AJ Jones, McCann Canada

The background
Wendy's exists in one of the most competitive categories in Canadian retail: Quick Service Restaurants. Caught
in a battle between providing low prices and higher quality, Wendy's has become known as one of the few in the
category firmly on the side of quality (Angus Reid).

A challenger brand, Wendy's sits in third place, well behind the big national chains, McDonald's and A&W (the
Canadian offshoot of the large US burger chain). In salads specifically, during the campaign period the year
prior, Wendy's served just 12.5% of the category salad servings nationally – a figure not dissimilar to its overall
category market share. (The NPD Group, 2020.)

The QSR salad category is important to chains that are typically thought of as 'burger' restaurants for two main
reasons. Firstly, it is lucrative: it provides additional occasion possibilities for those not looking for a burger and
fries. Secondly, Canadian consumers consistently point to salads – and their fresh ingredients – as a strong
indicator of quality among the QSRs they frequent (The NPD Group, 2020.)

In appreciation of the importance of salad within its offering, 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. Instead of trying to minimize product costs, Wendy's went the other
way, dramatically improving the quality of its salads to try and steal market share. They planned to launch during
the seasonal upswing in salad demand between Q1 and Q2 – a time in Canada when the sun finally comes out
from its long hibernation and people become more optimistic and aware of the need to eat healthier in
anticipation of the summer.

The problem
The world's biggest wrench was thrown into our plants: COVID-19. The pandemic hit right as the new salads
were ready to launch. This posed a major problem for Wendy's, as all over the country, Canadians turned to
comfort foods – 35% of Canadians reported increasing their consumption of junk food and sweets in May 2020
(Statistics Canada, Government of Canada. May 2020).

Demand for salad cratered. While a turn to comfort food would typically be good news for a QSR burger
restaurant, the timing couldn't be worse for Wendy's.
 Slumping salad sales across category. (Chart)

They had a major problem on their hands – truckloads upon truckloads of fresh whole-leaf lettuce were destined
to leave the Wendy's greenhouses and make their way to Wendy's locations across Canada… and almost no
one was interested in buying it.

Our campaign had three sales objectives, and one brand social sentiment objective. As Wendy's marketing
operations are completely franchisee-funded, it was imperative that the launch of Greenhouse Grown salads
paid off in additional sales to these franchisees.

Even more important, given the change in lettuce and the resulting expense of this new, higher-quality product,
we couldn't let any lettuce go to waste. Low sales would be a disappointment, but product wastage would be
catastrophic.

The Objectives:

1. Increase total salad sales by 7.5% year-over-year (July-August 2019).

Given market conditions, avoiding product loss would be our main objective. As product planning has a
multi-month lead time, Wendy's was due to receive tons of lettuce despite the drop in consumer demand.
We needed to sell more than the same sales period the year prior to prevent waste.

2. Increase total sales across all Wendy's locations by 3% compared to the same sales period the
year prior (July-August 2019).
Given the expense of growing the new higher quality lettuce, sales had to be bolstered compared to the
sales period the year prior to make the change worthwhile. Salad had to be the driver of sales growth
during this period. This objective was a particular challenge given the market was at the peak of the first
 pandemic wave, and that our target was no longer buying salad as they once did.

3. Increase Wendy's share of QSR salad nationally by 10% - from 12.5% market share (July-August
2019) to between 13.5% and 14%, as measured by the industry benchmark report compiled by
NPD Group.
Wendy's wanted to boost its share in the QSR salad category by heralding the introduction of the new
Greenhouse Grown lettuce at a time when the competition had no new news.

Wendy's share of salad had been creeping up slowly but remained low prior to the campaign. (Chart)

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

After the start of the Covid-19 pandemic (and the lockdowns that ensued) sentiment across social media
was down. Wendy's wasn't immune and saw a steep drop in sentiment on its main social platform, Twitter.
Prior to the campaign, share of social sentiment had fallen to a record low of 14%. Our goal was to bring
positive sentiment to where it was prior to the pandemic, specifically back to February 2020 levels (28%
share of sentiment).

The strategy
Creative strategy

We needed to understand why people were turning to comfort food. Through our research, 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. In essence, food is used as a crutch when times are
emotionally tough. (Troisi JD, Gabriel S, Derrick JL, Geisler A. Threatened belonging and preference for comfort
food among the securely attached. Appetite. 2015.)

But at a time when people couldn't be physically closer, being virtually closer wasn't helping. In fact, Canadians
were reporting that being on social media during the pandemic was making things worse. 71% of Canadians
believed people to be more hostile and negative on social media (J. Clement, Statista).

As we saw in our research, Canadians were turning to comfort foods. Given the connection between coping and
consumption of comfort foods we found in our research, we posited that the main driver of this emotional trouble
was a lack of social connection during the early stages of the pandemic (36% of Canadians reported dropping
the number of social interactions in their life during this time – "Community Connections During COVID-19".
Angus Reid).

Perhaps we could use this connection to craft a campaign that fostered positive social interactions while
simultaneously imbuing our new salads with the positive emotions associated with comfort foods.

In our research, we found that it isn't just people that benefit from social connection, but plants too. Studies have
shown that they actually grow better when consistently spoken to (Journal of Integrative Agriculture). Indeed,
this was even a vein of research that Prince Charles himself first spoke of in 1984. If both people and plants
benefit from positive social interaction, maybe there was a way we could connect the two in our campaign.

Media strategy

Our target for the campaign was Salad Fanatics, a small group of QSR frequenters that far prefer purchasing
salads over burgers. In numbers, the size of the 'recent QSR consumer' universe is approximately 13 million
people, of whom just 1.95 million fit into the Salad Fanatic target group.

It's a target that skews younger, and female, and is also highly digital, logging over 5.5 hours online per day at
the peak of the first wave of the pandemic (Vividata).

They also over-index on time spent on social media, with 63% spending at minimum an hour on social media
every single day (eMarketer).

It's also a target that is paying extra attention to what goes on behind their purchases. With a major focus on
sustainability, over half (55%) of younger consumers look for sustainable products, and 43% are even willing to
pay more for those products (A.T. Kearney. Deliverect.).

Given these insights, we knew our campaign had to have a specific focus on social media to connect with our
core consumer, and that if we could break through to an already marketing-inundated consumer, our new, more
sustainable product would likely be very well received.
 Salad Fanatics made up almost 1 in 5 consumers in the QSR category, but had been largely ignored when it
came to new product innovations in the category. (Chart)

Creative implementation
We created the Grown With Love, an interactive campaign that had Canadians literally talk to plants.

Stage 1: Nurture Love

Through social videos and posts, we encouraged Canadians to use the hashtag #GrownWithLove, to tweet
messages of love and support to our greenhouse lettuce that our Wendy's lettuce expert Rindi read out to the
plants as they grew. We then shared back to people a video of Rindi reading their tweet to the lettuce. We used
TV ads and a Twitter takeover to encourage Canadians to talk to our lettuce.

Stage 2: The Experiment

We collaborated with Dr. Tijana Blanusa, Principal Horticultural Scientist at Britain's Royal Horticultural Society
to determine the time, frequency, and distance from which we should communicate with the plants for the best
result.
 Dr. Tijana Blanusa, Plant Whisperer

Stage 3: Spreading the Love

From there, we conducted an experiment over the four weeks of the campaign, having one side of the
greenhouse act as control (i.e. not getting any love) so we could see if our efforts truly made the lettuce grow
better. The Wendy's horticulturalists took keen notice, looking to see if this could lead to any process
improvements to their lettuce harvesting.

We also hosted a live 'lovestream' on Twitter, where we read out chat messages of love to our lettuce in real
time on video for all the world to see.

Stage 4: Bringing the Lettuce to our Salad Fanatics

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 to bring the
campaign to even more Canadians – and show Canadians that our lettuce was just that much more special than
our competition.
Results
We exceeded our objectives on all four of our metrics when comparing our campaign period to the same sales
period the year prior (July-August 2019). Core salad sales grew 16%, beating not just our expectations, but the
previous high-mark outside of a pandemic. This during a comfort food craze. With our careful targeting of Salad
Fanatics, we were even able to avoid stealing share from the hamburger side of the business, with those sales
increasing 3.4% over the course of the Grown With Love campaign.

Same-restaurant sales were boosted over 4.4% at a time when in-restaurant dining was prohibited across the
vast majority of the country (affecting over 90% of Wendy's locations).

Critically, the campaign helped Wendy's capture significant share in the QSR Salad category, moving from
12.5% to 15% comparing the same sales period the year prior (July-August 2019).

We were even able to bring positivity to the negative Wendy's social media universe, with the campaign
boosting positive share of sentiment towards Wendy's on Twitter to a 44% share. 16 points higher than target.

1. Objective: Increase core salad sales by 7.5% year-over-year (July-August 2019)

Result: Core salad sales grew 16% compared to July-August 2019.

Sales exceeded expectations, and the problem changed from ensuring we sold all the lettuce purchased
from our supplier, to buying more to fill excess demand.
 Wendy's saw a 16% increase in salad sales over the course of the campaign period when compared to
July-August 2019. (Chart)

2. Objective: Increase same-restaurant sales by 3% YoY (July-August 2019).

Result: Same-restaurant sales increased by 4.4% compared to July-August 2019. During the same
time (July-August 2019) the year prior, Wendy's had launched a new Limited Time Offer salad variety for
summer. Given the expense of the new higher quality product, sales had to be bolstered even compared to
the elevated sales period the year prior.

3. Objective: Increase Wendy's share of QSR salad nationally by 10% - from 12.5% market share to
between 13.5% and 14%, as measured by the industry benchmark report compiled by NPD
Group. Compared to July-August 2019.
Result: Wendy's share of QSR salad nationally increased by 20% - from 12.5% to 15% market
share compared to July-August 2019.

The campaign boosted Wendy's share of the QSR salad category by 20%.
 Wendy's share of salad shot up from 12.5% to 15.2% after slow growth in years previous. (Chart)

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

Result: Positive sentiment for Wendy's on Twitter grew to a 44% share. +50% points higher than
target.

Not only did the campaign bring sentiment back up to pre-pandemic levels, but it also led to the highest
positive social sentiment scores seen in the 12 months prior, in large part due to the great success of the
livestream which saw 60,000 people attend.1
 Wendy's brand social sentiment positively grew to 44% in July-August 2020. (Chart)

Return on marketing investment

As a result of the campaign, Wendy's saw $3.34 in core salad revenue for every $1 spent in advertising and
marketing costs during the campaign period (Wendy's Canada Business Update, November 2020).

Other effects

Even our lettuce grew from all that love. We were able to measure the differences in yield between our 'loved'
lettuce and the control group:

Highest average head weight within the last year – 25,000 kg/day/lane compared to 18,000 kg/day/lane in
the control group.3
Shortest growing time to reach maturation, which means more lettuces can grow to maturation per month.3
This combined to create the highest yield the third-party lettuce grower had ever captured.3

This means Wendy's saw better efficiency in their lettuce purchase in the 2020 lettuce harvesting season.
Based on the way Wendy's purchases its lettuce, and because each head of lettuce weighed more than
average, Wendy's received up to 39% more lettuce than contractually paid for during the campaign period
(Harvest Analysis, Wendy's Canada/Inspired Greens). That's thousands of kilograms of lettuce that can be
considered 'bonus' product as a result of the campaign.

Considering other factors that may have been at play

Excitement caused by new product launch

 Creating buzz about a new product can sometimes induce demand all on its own. However, we were
launching our new Greenhouse Grown lettuce during July 2020, and in July 2019 – the comparable
sales period – Wendy's had launched a brand-new Berry Burst salad. Both sales periods being
compared had a new product launch and the same media expenditure, but despite cratering salad
demand caused by the pandemic, the success of the Grown With Love campaign was greater. Berry
Burst remains on the menu, and now features Wendy's new lettuce.
Shifting product offerings in category
Some competitors, like McDonald's and Tim Hortons, responded to the pandemic by retooling their
operations and limiting the number of products offered based on consumer demand. Instead of
delisting certain underperforming salad SKUs, Wendy's took the complete opposite approach –
zigging when the competition zagged – and successfully created demand for these products thus
securing greater market share.
Strict Canadian government reaction to COVID-19
Unlike other countries that opened up after the initial wave of Covid-19 subsided, the Canadian (and
respective Provincial) government remained very strict in keeping dining rooms closed. This of course
meant Wendy's was unable to offer in-restaurant dining, but also closed down a large owned
communications channel – Point-of-Purchase (PoP). Where in previous years PoP was a large cost-
free add-on to the communications channel plan, this was unavailable to us for the Grown with Love
campaign outside of packaging itself.

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