THE CLIENT | RAISING CANE’S
In 1996, Todd Graves had a chicken finger dream and just enough money for a small business loan. He opened Raising Cane’s Chicken Finger fast food restaurant and never looked back. After 26 years, the beloved chain has 600 locations across the United States feeding plenty of hungry souls, especially college students.
GOALS
Raising Cane’s decided to partner with College Marketing Group (CMG) to build a brand awareness strategy through print advertising. The campaign featured two print pieces: 4×4-inch clings with QR codes and sidewalk vinyls.
The campaign sought to raise awareness of the brand around the University of Pennsylvania, Temple University, The Pennsylvania State University, Tennessee Tech University, and California Polytechnic State University.
While print campaigns can’t track how many students and faculty members come to the restaurant after seeing a cling or sidewalk vinyl, brand ambassadors on each campus chose high traffic areas to place print ads where hundreds of people walked by each day.
CAMPAIGN
Raising Cane’s needed a campaign that exposed the brand to thousands of college students and directed them to the nearest restaurant location.
LOCATION MEDIA
Clings
Brand ambassadors can place a marketing cling just about anywhere. They can stick them to tables, doors, windows, check-out counters, desks, heck, even urinals. With hundreds of clings in a concentrated area, it’s easy to catch the attention of a student at least a few times. Many of CMG’s clings feature QR codes to allow passers-by to quickly use their mobile phone to visit an advertiser’s website.
Raising Cane’s had CMG brand ambassadors place the 4×4 clings in high-traffic areas on and off campus. Some chosen areas included street sign poles, campus building walls,entrance ways, bulletin boards, water fountains, ATMs, dorm room doors, campus maps, elevators, and bathroom mirrors, to name a few.
Sidewalk Vinyls
On a college campus, you do a lot of walking. There are areas on or around campus that students walk past every day — or at least a few times a week. Sidewalk vinyls literally place company branding beneath the feet of students and faculty.
Raising Cane’s chose CMG’s 18×18-inch sidewalk vinyls. Brand ambassadors helped pick with the most foot traffic. They usually chose entrances to popular buildings on campus, bus stops, crosswalks, and bathroom entrances.
RESULTS
Since these Raising Cane’s locations were new to the five campuses in the campaign, QR-code clings and vinyls boosted the restaurant’s initial sales and raised brand awareness on all of the participating campuses.
Yes, I know!
This creative tactic developed a touch-and-feel approach. The kind of experience that digital marketing will not capture.
Oh, I didn't know!
Many students already knew the brand but were unaware Raising Cane’s was now open for business in their area.
Hey, me too.
Thousands of students learned about Raising Cane’s because of these efforts. The campaign transformed college students into “caniacs” one vinyl at a time!
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