Hyperquake Blog

Background:

Buffalo Wings & Rings was a relatively small, loosely organized brand that had experienced moderate success over the years. Founded in 1984, BW&R had grown to nearly 100 locations by the mid 90s, but saw a rapid decline in their numbers due to fast growth and lack of franchise support systems. Ultimately, they saw their store count drop. Over the last 10 years, BW&R has focused on growth and developing their franchise support systems, bringing their store count back to 40+ geographically-fragmented locations, but there was something missing. In 2009, BW&R partnered with Hyperquake to help identify those missing elements and embarked on a complete brand repositioning.

Existing Brand Experience:

During their most recent growth efforts, the brand had admittedly become dated. From the store and menu, to the core consumer and trade marketing elements, the brand had become less relevant and less appealing. During the same period, a major player had emerged and had ultimately defined expectations within their category, along with some new, smaller players who’d carved out niches for themselves.

Brand Evolution Solution:

Understanding that a holistic solution required alignment across all functions of the organization (marketing, construction, operations, training and franchisees) HQ began the evolution process with a basic hypothesis: the category had become so male centric, that females and families were increasingly underserved.

Grounded in category and consumer research, we began to find there was a great opportunity space: BW&R could have a significant impact on market share and volume by appealing to females and families, without alienating the core male target.

Moving forward, the brand would no longer be “just another wing joint”, rather a sports restaurant. With a renewed emphasis on food quality and community involvement, BW&R was positioned to become the kind of inviting place where friends and family like to get together, watch a game and share stories over the best wings and rings anywhere.

With the foundation laid, HQ developed a new brand look, tone and feel across all consumer touchpoints, including: a bright and contemporary store design/experience, a category leading menu, a robust and localized social media strategy, a unique and engaging CRM program and website and an innovative and differentiated approach to franchise sales.

Results:

BW&R has opened more new stores in 2011 than 2009 and 2010 combined. Their consumer database has grown from 0 to 40,000+ members in just 2 years, and Facebook fans and social engagement have grown exponentially (10,000>35,000+ fans). Total website traffic has increased 30%, new visits are up 25% and search results are at an all time high and the new menu design has increased check averages and driven volumes on historically lower selling items while maintaining and/or increasing lead item volumes.

Background

Hyperquake was tapped by Welch’s to help remind old friends, as well as the new crop of health-conscious consumers, that Welch’s juices and products were still as delicious as ever, but also had an unexpectedly healthy twist. To convert the masses we had to first develop a modern new look, vision and attitude for the brand. (To help people reconsider a brand they had known their entire lives, we needed a shock to the system). We then applied our strategy to a broad scale digital deployment.

Welch’s was a heritage brand, with an old-fashioned image, that was starting to lose relevance with its consumers. They had also amassed a substantial website offering limitless information on their vast array of products as well as large amounts of health and wellness information, reports and studies. The site was designed to be purely informational and the large amount of information it housed was not conducive to long consumer interactions.

Brand Evolution Solution

The first task was to update the look and feel of the brand to make it more modern and appealing to a younger, more tech savvy audience. To keep up with the competition, the brand had to feel far more sophisticated and needed a more experiential appeal that matched its strong health credentials.

The next step was to make the site more experiential, not just info housed on endless text pages, but built around consumer desire to understand. We used a number of immersion techniques, utilizing discovery, metaphor, comparisons, content from well known experts and unexpected and surprising nuggets of relevant information to push visitors deeper into the brand.

The full digital campaign became a transformational experience. Anyone who was exposed to it walked away with a radically altered view of the brand as well as a wealth of understanding about anti-oxidants and their powerful effect on the body.

The entire digital experience was redesigned with both internal and external sections, rallying the company around one idea.

Results

Site visits increased 300% in the first month. Page views per session increased 85%. Over the last year and a half, traffic has expanded as consumers spread the word and content was expanded. With promotion and cause-related marketing efforts, our Facebook footprint grew from a few thousand fans to over 80,000 fans in three months. The Welch’s database swelled to over 50,000 members. Sales had a year-over-year increase of 4% reversing a 5 year trend of declining sales.