The objective

Subscribing younger consumers to endless refreshment

Thirsty? Panera's Unlimited Sip Club loyalty program offers an endless supply of beverages, from their new Charged Lemonades to coffees, teas, and soda. To support the launch, Panera wanted to generate awareness and drive subscriptions among TikTok users.

The solution

Building loyalty and excitement through sequential messaging

In order to build awareness and drive subscriptions for Panera's Unlimited Sip Club program, a custom activation plan on TikTok engaged users by informing and getting them excited about the loyalty program. A combination of high impact media placements followed by sustained messaging drove maximum impact to drive subscriptions online. Panera's messaging focused on engaging TikTok’s audience to sign up immediately during their limited-time offering (LTO) window, with call-to-actions (CTAs) for users to sign up for Unlimited Sip Club and get any drink for free.

Panera built audiences' thirst with TopView to achieve its mass awareness objective. Upon their first open of the app, viewers received a brand message through this high impact, full-screen video. Panera followed this up with Top Feed, a new product to further reach their target audience with sequential messaging via the first in-feed ad slot. Both placements allowed Panera to be featured within the first few scrolls as users began engaging with content. Panera targeted broad US audiences, 18+, in addition to a list of designated market areas (DMAs) where select cafes were located to maximize efficiencies and ensure messaging was focused in the most relevant markets.

Panera's creative included a combination of TikTok-native assets for their mass-reach moments, leveraging popular TikTok creator Chris Olsen in its hero placement. In conjunction, repurposed brand assets were adapted following TikTok's creative best practices for their In Feed Video (IFV) that sustained the messaging and reinforced the CTA throughout the remainder of the flight.

The results

Engaged communities drove brand equity and results

Through our partnership, Panera met their target sign-up goals for the Unlimited Sip Club loyalty program. This identified TikTok as a top performing partner and resulted in incremental funds for the partnership.

The campaign exceeded brand lift benchmarks, driving an +8.2% lift in Brand Awareness, +7.1% lift in Brand Familiarity and +19.4% lift in Ad Recall. All ad types generated incremental lift for Panera's Unlimited Sip Club, with the Top Feed unit outperforming in both behavioral lift and efficient cost per visits. TopView was a strong awareness driver helping to generate subscriptions, while Top Feed worked as pulsed campaign strategy to extend the messaging throughout the flight and bolstered reach in the back half of the campaign. TopView exceeded VCR benchmarks by 73% through a 25% share-of-voice (SOV) execution. Top Feed maintained users attention 2x more than their In-Feed Ads across video view rate while also delivering the highest video views in comparison to all ad units. IFV maintained users' attention 30% longer than benchmarks and drove a 68% higher CTR than benchmark.

Leveraging their existing creator partnership in conjunction with diverse products and objective utilization in TikTok Ads Manager helped Panera build brand equity with our Tiktok community in addition to their subscription goals.