Arby’s Free Sandwich Month campaign won Gold in Food and Beverage at The Drum Awards for Marketing, showcasing a clever strategy to counter online critics by offering a month of free sandwiches, featuring social media trolls on billboards and a lie detector test, ultimately boosting rewards sign-ups and repeat purchases.
American drive-thru underdog, Arby’s, has been known for offering a wide variety of meat sandwiches. At the same time, Arby’s has been the punchline of some of the most recycled jokes on the internet: Arby’s food is low quality and no one eats there. The reality is that those people haven’t actually tried Arby’s.
Arby’s designed a promotion that was impossible to say no to. It forced those passionate non-believers to reconsider with an offer too good to miss. Arby’s Free Sandwich Month: one free sandwich per week in April for Arby’s Rewards members.
The program was announced on one of America’s largest stages, during men’s college basketball playoffs (March Madness Final Four) with a spot that featured the iconic voice of Arby’s confronting a hater, forcing him to try a sandwich. To demonstrate that Arby’s is better than people pretend to know, Arby’s invited real-life social media haters to participate in the Try Detector Test. This social campaign featured real Arby’s internet trolls, hooked up to a fake lie detector test, where they literally ate their words. Arby’s also showed up in hater’s hometowns, where their tweets were transformed to Free Sandwich Month promotions on digital billboards and murals.
Arby’s Free Sandwich Month not only put the Arby’s haters to rest, but also achieved real business results, with a significant growth in Arby’s Rewards sign-ups and repeat purchasers.
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