Slims Chicken - THE BRIEF
For Christmas 2021, Slim Chickens came to us with a challenge. Not traditionally associated with being a festive destination, our brief was to make Slim Chickens culturally relevant at Christmas time and encourage customers to visit their local restaurant. The real challenge… They had NO CHRISTMAS MENU.
THE SOLUTION - #chickenout
We discovered that the Slims’ audience actually felt pressured by the ‘forced fun’ and endless arrangements that come with Christmas. With the brand’s loose ties to mental health values, we thought about how we could connect with the target audience in a way that considered these, yet also complemented the brand’s personality of being fun and bold.
Introducing #ChickenOut, a 360 campaign designed to empower our audience to put themselves first over the holiday period. Often associated as being a negative term, ‘chickening out’ is used to poke fun at a person who is nervous of doing something. Turning this on its head, we created a comedic campaign calling for our audiences to #ChickenOut of unwanted Christmas plans and to find a little bit of respite at Slims.
Bringing it to life
To bring #ChickenOut to life, it was important to get the tone right, so we recruited comedy talent - David Whitely, Mat Carter and Bailey LDN to write the guide book on Chickening Out. Through bold and funny content they got to work, calling for fans to cancel their Christmas commitments and enjoy their new-found freedom in their local Slim Chickens restaurant.
Chosen for their incredible script writing, energy and comedic timing, we worked closely with the talent to give them freedom within the scripts and content. With a strong idea and tight brief we were able to trust that they would deliver the message with comedy impact. And our talent pulled out all the stops. From dreaded Christmas shopping to unwanted plans with the in-laws, their unique skits saw them bring #ChickenOut to life in a way their audiences would resonate with. The campaign flipped the narrative on festive content, offering fans an unexpected solace at Slims Chicken.
We also developed a content calendar for the brands own social channels to ensure the #ChickenOut message was strong across all their comms.
To scale the campaign even further we created an OOH campaign, strategically selecting busy shopping locations for the billboards to be placed near recently opened Slims restaurants. To ensure relevancy and synchronicity, we briefed our talent Mat Carter to create an additional asset centred around the exhausting process of festive shopping to be used in the digital billboard.
THE results
With the inspiration of mental wellbeing behind the campaign, we were able to inspire our audience to put themselves first and to take pride in doing what makes them happy at Christmas. The campaign was a huge success, overdelivering on every KPI. We also saw an extremely strong brand sentiment across the comments on the content.
