A&W Canada: transforming the marketing strategy
of Canada's second largest burger chain.
For the last decade, A&W’s marketing was driven by product news, price promotions, and big increases in media spend. The problem was that any time they didn’t have these levers available to them, the business would struggle. This was the case after 2020.
The solution wasn’t rocket science – the biggest reasons Canadians chose fast food was comfort, and our research revealed products and experiences part of the brand’s iconic history that Canadians found comfort in. All we had to do was bring these top of mind after years of pushing them aside for price and product messaging. This would bring A&W back to sustainable growth.
Brand Advertising
Our new brand platform allowed us to remind Canadians about the routines, rituals, and memories with the brand that bring them comfort. Our new tagline “Who’s Your Burger Family,” calls back to brand characters famous in the 90s and early 2000s, and still featured in menu naming.
Every spot we have produced sits in System1’s national top 20. Here are two of my favourites. The second one claimed the #1 spot on System1s Canadian ad rankings. The rest all fall in the top 20. People have called into A&W’s headquarters telling us how much they love the spots.
Brand Identity System
We had veered off course for the last decade, introducing dozens of inconsistent tertiary colours and photo treatments. We needed to simplify. We went back to the brand’s iconic orange and brown. We introduced a new sensory-first food photography style that made the country’s favourite burgers look as appetizing as they taste. Iconic characters from decades ago were redrawn and given a purpose. And a new custom typeface was inspired by classic menu boards and signage found in the brand archives.
Packaging and in store design have also evolved to reflect the new identity and will be rolling out in 2024.
Extending to
frozen drinks
When we launched frozen drinks, an entirely new product category, we led with A&W’s beloved Root Beer rather than talking about the new flavours. Sales of all frozen drinks doubled after the campaign, which had the highest recall of any campaign run in the last 5 years.
The campaign insight came from sales data that showed how coke is the best selling drink everywhere except A&W, where it’s Root Beer. Even if someone prefers Coke day to day, they find it weird to drink anything other than Root Beer at A&W.
This was early proof that our strategy to embrace our iconic brand history was working.
Bringing back nostalgic favourites instead of introducing new products
Rather than introducing new recipes through limited time offers, we experimented with bringing back a discontinued, nostalgic cult favourite, the Whistle Dog (it’s a simple weiner wrapped in bacon, if you’re curious).
The humble hot dog had a higher search volume than Taylor Swift during the week of launch and remains their best-selling product of all time.