Renew Re-Fresh Re-Focus on Summer Wendy’s

 

In a new partnership Wendy’s wants to re-fresh its messaging, re-focus on summer, and renew its goal to garner a larger share of this target market Gen Z and Millennials to drive new electricity according to Steven Johnson Grocerant Guru® at Tacoma, WA based Foodservice Solutions®.

In case you had not head, Wendy’s has teamed with T-Pain as part of a campaign around the return of the Strawberry Frosty.  This late Spring early Summer advertising messaging dubbed “Fros-T-Pain,” the rapper-singer has remade his 2007 hit “Buy U a Drank” with new lyrics about the Frosty flavor. “Buy U a Frosty” is available on Wendy’s YouTube channel and will soon be available for consumers to duet on TikTok.

This represents Wendy’s latest attempt to engage with consumers around pop culture and follows a raft of campaigns from various brands that has seen musicians remix their hits into brand jingles according ti industry insiders.

So, this latest campaign aims to engage with pop culture nostalgia to promote the summertime return of its Strawberry Frosty treat. The tie-up with T-Pain touches on several marketing tactics popular with brands in recent years.

The “Fros-T-Pain” campaign features the remixed track, available on YouTube and TikTok, along with a full-length music video that features T-Pain in the studio, in front of a Strawberry Frosty-inspired coupe and in a Wendy’s that has been turned into a nightclub. The final shot reveals that the entire video might be in T-Pain’s head, with a Wendy’s employee nodding to the “sir, this is a Wendy’s” meme.

By rewriting “Buy U a Drank” as “Buy U a Frosty,” Wendy’s becomes the latest brand to collaborate with a musician to turn a fan-favorite song into a brand-ready jingle. General Mills snack brand Chex Mix in January enlisted Sir Mix-A-Lot to remix “Baby Got Back” as “Bagel Is Back,” while Uber’s Super Bowl spot revolved around Sean “Diddy” Combs and artists including Kelis and Montell Jordan remixing their songs to reference its subscription service. In a similar move, Frito-Lay’s 2022 Super Bowl spot tapped Megan Thee Stallion for a reimagined version of Salt-N-Pepa’s “Push It.” 

In collaborating with T-Pain, Wendy’s taps into early-aughts nostalgia for a reinvigorated hitmaker who is no stranger to brand campaigns. Lipton Tea cast the rapper-singer as “Cousin T” in a similarly nostalgia-inspired effort, while Alka-Seltzer had T-Pain rework their “plop, plop, fizz, fizz” slogan as a song and dance challenge on TikTok.

Time to Build a Larger Share of Stomach

The team at Foodservice Solutions® aggrees that Wendy’s has long keyed in on culture to engage with younger, more elusive consumers, popularizing the sarcastic, combative tone that was popular with fast-food chains in the years before the pandemic. The chain has continued to tie-up with pop cultural phenomena, like Adult Swim favorite “Rick and Morty,” and has experimented with emerging channels, including the metaverse and shoppable ads on connected TV.

According to Johnson, “Brand relevance is in part driven with innovation in new food products in combination with new avenues of distribution all of which are the platform for the new electricity.” 

Johnson stated “that in my minds-eye the new electricity must be very efficient for the supply and includes such things as fresh foods, developing brands, unique urban clothing, grocerant positioning, fresh food messaging, autonomous delivery, cashier-less retail, plates, glasses, cash-less payments, digital hand-held marketing.

All retailers to survive the next generation of retail must embrace the artificial intelligence revolution while simultaneously embracing fresh food that is portable, fresh, with differentiation that is familiar not different. 

Foodservice Solutions® specializes in outsourced business development. We can help you identify, quantify and qualify additional food retail segment opportunities or a new menu product segment and brand and menu integration strategy.  Foodservice Solutions® of Tacoma WA is the global leader in the Grocerant niche visit us on our social media sites by clicking one of the following links: Facebook,  LinkedIn, or Twitter