Wendy's

The objective

Bringing Roast Day to TikTok

Wendy’s is a beloved and iconic fast-food brand with global reach. Wendy’s is different, from its square hamburger patties (“we don't cut corners!”) to its iconic Frosty dessert. That unique branding style extends to their social media presence, too.

In 2018, Wendy's created "National Roast Day," an original holiday inviting fans to engage in playful roasting with the brand on social. In 2023, Wendy's evolved the holiday into a video-first campaign on TikTok, leading to the biggest National Roast Day to-date.

The solution

Bring Wendy to life on TikTok spark engagement and drive user participation

To bring "Roast Day" to TikTok, Wendy's created a brand-new way to engage with fans. For the first time in history, the brand dished out roasts with a new animated version of Wendy. The iconic Wendy's logo came to life to engage with her fans, playfully roasting, stitching and dueting. Brave brands and fans alike lined up to be #roasted by everyone’s favorite redhead for three consecutive days.

Wendy's leveraged TopFeed and In-Feed Ads to spark engagement and drive user participation on the platform. Specifically, the brand invested in TopFeed to drive awareness and build hype through teaser content prior to the official launch of Roast Day, while using In-Feed Ads with Focused View to maximize engagement. The Focused View objective offers a way for advertisers to drive brand impact by ensuring their ads are shown to users who are truly paying attention — to users who are both emotionally and tangibly engaged.

Wendy's relied on organic tools such as duetting and stitching to make the advertising content feel natural to the platform, leading to further engagement from users. Creative was designed TikTok-first, in real time, during the flight. The brand even had a live voice actor in studio recording the roasts throughout the day! To conclude, Wendy's ran a Brand Lift Study to capture the incremental impact of the campaign.

This multi-pronged approach bolstered Wendy’s overall presence on TikTok and drove reach, awareness, and brand love. TikTok's innovative ad solutions allowed Wendy's to extend one of their most iconic campaigns to a new environment, one that specifically craves innovation and creativity.

The results

This campaign is on fire!

Wendy's Roast Day campaign, fueled by TopFeed and In-Feed Ads, led to mass reach and authentic user engagement for the brand. The campaign amassed 116 million total views of #NationalRoast Day, resulted in 30% reach, and led to an increase in 153,900 followers for the brand. Additionally, Wendy's saw an increase in store visits through foot traffic metrics, specifically a 4.5% increase in store visit BVR lift against Focused View In-Feed Ads per Foursquare. With a brand-forward campaign, Wendy's succeeded in directing people to the website and driving sales. Looking at the results of the Brand Lift Study, Wendy's saw a 37.4% lift in Ad Recall and a 28.1% lift in Awareness.

Ultimately, Wendy's learned that TikTok rewards creativity, specifically how developing unique content results in immense lift in ad recall and awareness, leading to positive business outcomes. With this kind of success, Wendy's will continue to leverage TikTok's innovative ad solutions to drive brand engagement and has plans to continue developing Roast Day each year on the platform with Virtual Wendy.