Popeyes We Come In Piece

Background

A world in which every Chicken QSR sells nuggets, except Popeyes.

Popeyes has been selling chicken since 1972, with an approach to craft based on lack of compromise when it comes to things like marinating for 12+ hours, hand-crafting each piece, and doing it all with cajun spices in authentic Louisiana style - which no other QSR does. They’ve always offered bone-in-chicken, biscuits, and home-cooking-inspired sides like mashed potatoes, cajun rice, and coleslaw, and most recently introduced THE famous chicken sandwich.

But there’s something Popeyes still didn’t offer in 2021. Nuggets.

Nuggets are amongst the most popular items in QSR. They excel in craveability and versatility - spoken of as offering ‘comfort food’ feel in a ‘convenient’ and easy-to-portion form that’s also ‘kid-friendly’ in qualitative research. They’re purchased as snacks, on-the-go meals, and appetizers, expanding occasions. Without nuggets, Popeyes was leaving an opportunity of up to 580 AUVs (average unit volume) of boneless chicken per store, daily, unrealized vs its biggest rival, Chick-fil-A. Chick-fil-A first introduced nuggets in 1982, and then basically every QSR player followed. From Church’s Chicken, KFC, and Wendy’s, to Burger King and McDonald’s.

Now, Popeyes’ culinary team had crafted not just one more version of nuggets, but the best nuggets in QSR, with 7 in 10 people preferring them to our biggest rival’s in clean label testing. Attention to craft was key not just because that’s how Popeyes does things, but also because this launch would follow in the footsteps of the launch of THE sandwich that started the ‘Chicken Wars’. So besides representing a huge business opportunity, these nuggets, and their launch, had a lot of hype to live up to.

Although the cultural phenomenon that was the launch of THE chicken sandwich is unlikely to ever be replicated, we challenged ourselves to bring to life a campaign that would push nuggets into that same realm.

Objectives:

1. Awareness: To help sustain the growth that the sandwich had brought Popeyes, nuggets had to blow up in culture.

2. Trial: We knew if people tried them, they’d be back.

3. Buzz: The internet and press would have to do their thing.

Audience

Popeyes’ psychographically-defined audience is called ‘Spice of Lifers’. They tend to be free-spirited, care about important causes in the world, and are positive and optimistic about a better future. We had to do right by them. 

Research

Before our nuggets were even on the market, we knew people would love them. And after going through the clean-label product testing research showing our product’s superiority, we were confident we could blow the competition out of the water and once again shake the QSR space. 

Overall, almost 7 in 10 people who tried our nuggets preferred them to Chick-fil-A’s, our biggest rival. We outperformed across every attribute measured:

• 80% preference for quality (vs 59%)

• 74% preference for taste (vs 59%)

• 78% preference for presentation (vs 55%)

• 71% preference for the taste of nuggets with Ranch (vs 56%)

• 81% preference for the taste of nuggets with BBQ (vs 54%)

• 84% preference for ease of eating on the go (vs 78%)

These nuggets were unbeatable. As the ambition was to go as big as the sandwich when it came to impact in the category, the pressure was on to show the world that Popeyes had nuggets in a big way. This meant that the temptation to add fire to the Chicken Wars that culture loved to engage with was almost irresistible. But we knew that wasn’t the move, strategically.

Popeyes has a “Love with Sauce” brand personality. So yes, a ‘saucy’ brand, but not one here to fight with competitors. Being saucy certainly helped in winning people over with the sandwich launch, but Popeyes never actually attacked competitors. They’re the ones who had to fight back, and guests were the ones fueling the debate - or ‘war’ - around which sandwich was superior. Additionally, the societal context wasn’t the greatest at the time. Nuggets would launch while going through a global pandemic, the U.S. was facing heightened racial tension, and it was only months after the attack on the U.S Capitol building. Qualitative research confirmed that people were not looking for more fighting or divisiveness.

We needed to inject both the positivity our audience demanded and our ‘love with sauce’ personality into our launch, while still surfing the wave of hype generated by the ‘Chicken Wars’. The thinking became clear: our ‘love with sauce’ had to trump war.

Strategy & Idea

And our strategy crystalized in a single, powerful line: Bring PEACE (read also as ‘piece’) to the Chicken War we created.

The creative platform that followed not only leveraged the Chicken Wars and all the hype generated by THE sandwich, but did it in a way that would be a) unexpected for QSR guests, b) on-brand, c) appealing to our Spice of Lifers, and d) literally described the product we were launching: chicken in, well, pieces.

The creative platform: “We come in piece, the Chicken War is over”.

Campaign

To get people’s interest even before launch, we first released teasers on social hinting that Popeyes was cooking up something new.

It started with a tweet stating: “It’s over, y’all…” - a nod at ending the chicken wars that our sandwich had ignited. We then tweeted “We Are Ready”, stacked vertically, so it would read ‘WAR’. All carefully orchestrated to leverage the Chicken Wars hype but in the “love with sauce” tone that characterizes Popeyes. After that, we launched our take on the iconic white flag of truces. The flag waved our soon-to-be-released nugget, driving home that Popeyes had something new coming.

When launch day came, we took over billboards in New York City’s Times Square, proudly showcasing our white nugget flag of peace - letting the world know, in the most iconic city in America, that Popeyes’ nuggets had arrived.

We knew also that while saying ‘we come in piece’ was great, we also had the opportunity to act. The question was, in what way? How could we be provocative but still in a ‘love with sauce’ way? We bought 1 million nuggets from our competitors and donated them to the Second Harvest Foodbank of New Orleans - our hometown. And we invited guests to join in with donations of their own, which Popeyes would match. We then shared a film on all our social channels showing a Popeyes employee actually going to each key competitor to buy the nuggets - in the nicest way possible - literally coming in peace through the doors of our competitors’ stores. 

From TV, to social, to social good, and even influencer work, it all laddered up to our ‘We come in piece’ platform. 

Throughout the campaign, the brand also had to walk the talk in its interactions on social. Community managers were strategically prepared with de-escalation tactics to ensure that conversations around nuggets were filled with ‘love with sauce’, staying on-brand while still providing the saucy attitude we know ignites ‘the internet. The momentum, as well as the conversation, was sustained on social media with snackable content across TikTok and Instagram. We shared ‘piece and love’ stickers and gifs on Instagram that anyone could use, and our nugget flag of peace as an emoji on Twitter.

In parallel, we had the right PR strategy in place, instrumental in getting the media also talking about Popeyes nuggets coming ‘in piece’. We worked hand-in-hand with our PR partners to maximize every moment and tactic.

Each piece of creative was carefully thought-through. TV was doing the heavy lifting to drive awareness and trial. Social was generating huge amounts of conversation and impressions. Online video carrying the important story of acting and donating food while literally visiting our competitors in peace. And the iconic Times Square placements got the buzz and hype going in the heart of New York City - which then was shared on social media too, of course. 

All of the work, from teaser, to launch, and sustain phases, aimed to continuously pique people’s interest and keep the conversation going. All playing to the single-minded message that managed to leverage the prior Chicken Wars hype, the brand’s personality, and simultaneously educate on a product that literally comes in pieces: ‘We Come in Piece’.

Results

“We Come in Piece” successfully spread the message across the country that Popeyes nuggets were finally here, while managing to surf the wave of hype that THE sandwich had created.

Just 2 days post-launch, we had sparked 7,241 conversations about Popeyes nuggets, generating a total of 93.26MM impressions on social media. In its totality, the campaign drove 3.3 billion total earned media impressions.

Organic social outperformed benchmarks across channels. We saw an 80% increase in impressions per post on Instagram, and 62% on Facebook, compared to average. On Instagram in particular, our engagement rate was 49% higher than average. 

Our TV execution outperformed industry testing benchmarks in branding, short-term and long-term sales potential. Our scores for Ad Awareness, Consideration, Buzz, and Purchase Intent during the campaign period also outperformed industry benchmarks.

Popeyes Nuggets sales rose to over 100 AUVs per store in just 4 weeks. And after 3 months, Popeyes Nuggets-specific Awareness had grown to almost half of all QSR guests, and Trial to 1 in 5 guests.

“We Come in Piece” drove $39,649,280 in sales during the critical first 6 full weeks of the campaign. And we spread some much-needed love along the way too.