Growing Sales and Engagements By Building Community Connections
Situation
Church's Texas Chicken, one of the world's largest quick-service chicken restaurant chains, had rolled out exciting new brand positioning. As a fast follow, the brand was ready to launch a new line of spicy menu items — emphasizing their unique flavor and exceptional value. The goal was twofold: achieve a comp sales uplift of 5%+ and make the brand more relevant to Church’s ethnically diverse customer base. The campaign needed to show Church’s rich diversity in a highly authentic way and help the brand deepen its connection to the communities it serves.
Strategic Approach
The “Get Spicy” campaign targeted individuals aged 25-54, equally split among White, Black, and Latino families, with an average household income under $40,000 annually, living within 15 minutes of a Church’s restaurant. Research showed that summer provided opportunities for social gatherings in low-income neighborhoods, where our audience sought affordable food options.
We leveraged these insights by recruiting well-known freestyle rappers from Church’s communities to create authentic, relatable content. Filming in an Austin parking lot, we captured the essence of long summer days and vibrant social occasions, reflecting the multicultural nature of our audience.
For social media posts, we extended the idea by planning and holding a block party in a Church's parking lot in a lively Atlanta neighborhood and inviting the entire community. The party had a DJ, music, games, prizes, and a food truck serving samples of Church’s new spicy menu items to 150+ people. We were onsite to capture their authentic reactions to the food, and that honesty helped to establish third-party credibility as the menu items became available in restaurants nationwide.
Results
The “Get Spicy” campaign was fully integrated across TV, streaming radio, digital video, OOH, and paid social, in both English and Spanish, along with email and Church’s organic social media channels.
7.3%
comp increase in traffic
7.3%
comp increase in sales
1.25M
organic social impressions
27K+
organic social engagements
2.2%
organic social engagement rate
The video assets were IPSOS tested for sales effectiveness and brand-building capabilities. IPSOS yielded the campaign assets were in the top 10% of the work they had ever tested, with results like:
- 132 brand attention score (vs. an upper category range of 115)
- 152 behavioral change score (vs. an upper category range of 130)
- 201 creative effect score (vs. an upper category range of 130)
- 171 equity effect score (vs. an upper category range of 130)
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