Wendy’s, the official breakfast and hamburger of NCAA March Madness, activated around the college hoops tournament through a set of special promotions and offers promoted through a new menu, a special app and a series of commercials fronted by athlete ambassador and former NBA super star Reggie Miller.
The campaign, which kicked off the week before the 13 March start of the tournament, features the brand’s trademark comedy and humour and aims to drive sales and simultaneously to boost engagement with and downloads of the Wendy’s app.
Much of the activation programme’s creative is fronted by endorser and hoops legend Reggie Miller which promote the new items and offers and continue to solidify Wendy’s image as a tasty quick service option and as a tech-savvy brand with a sense of humour.
The campaign launched with a set of absurdist humour ads featuring Miller mocking himself and a cameo of ‘Wendy’ herself decked out in a NCAA-style headband.
The activation promotes five new deals (with separate tournament-linked timelines) advertised by the new campaign all of which were framed in player position terminology familiar to basketball fans: for example, ‘at center’ is the $1 Dave’s Single, ‘at point guard’ is the half-off breakfast deal, ‘at shooting guard’ is a $0 delivery fee, ‘at power forward’ is $3 off orders over $15 and ‘at small forward’ is a BOGO $1 premium chicken sandwich.
“At Wendy’s, we’re going mad with slam dunk deals like our app-exclusive Dave’s Single for a buck during the 2022 March Madness NCAA men’s and women’s tournaments,” said Wendy’s US Chief Marketing Officer Carl Loredo. “To celebrate our return as the Official Hamburger and Official Breakfast of March Madness, we’ve reteamed with Wendy’s superfan Reggie Miller for a three-peat partnership to bring the excitement. It’s a natural extension of our previous March Madness storylines with Reggie – reminding fans they can score the best breakfast and fresh never frozen beef hamburgers in town at Wendy’s.”
Other strand of the activation include a ‘Pick’Em’ bracket initiative and an Las Vegas initiative which saw cult entertainment paring Rick and Morty reunite and hoops fans invited to visit ‘Morty’s Mayhem’ on the Strip.
Wendy’s Pick ‘Em is BACK, baby!
Hit the ❤️, and we’ll hit you up when it’s time to make your picks for EVERY round of March Madness.
Winning picks win sweet deals, so Choose Wisely #ForTheWendys pic.twitter.com/7l8jasWATw
— Wendy’s (@Wendys) February 28, 2022
Let's get moderately schwifty then hit up Morty's Mayhem at Resorts World for the good brekky. https://t.co/5zyFW3YkMe
— Wendy’s (@Wendys) March 15, 2022
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This campaign follows in the footsteps of Wendy’s 2021 tournament activation which was also fronted by Miller and was developed in harness with Wendy’s agencies including VMLY&R, Spark Foundry, The Marketing Arm and Ketchum.
Founded more than 50 years ago, Wendy’s passed Burger King to become the USA’s number two quick service restaurant chain through a strategy partly built around menu innovation, approachability, comic commercials and witty social media posts which don’t avoid roasting rival brands.
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