Chicken is an American food staple: with 8.9 billion chickens produced annually, it’s

the most popular meat in the U.S. But the summer is a different story, when red meat rules the grill. In July 2022 alone, beef sales surpassed chicken sales by 2x.

Knowing the grill represented new growth opportunities, we needed to create an idea that increased awareness and consideration of Perdue chicken. And because individual parts tend to sell more than the whole bird, we aimed to find a way to make whole chicken the star of every grill. With that, our objectives were clear:

Communications Objective: Make people rethink Perdue chicken’s second-place

status as compared to red meat in the summer.

Marketing Objective: Get grillers to grow Perdue's “share of grill” over red

meat by trying Perdue whole chicken.

Commercial Objective: Boost sales of Perdue whole chickens at large.

Sources: Mintel, Beefresearch.org, National Provisioner

We created Perdue Beer Can Chicken Beer, the world’s first beer brewed specifically for beer can chicken. We custom crafted our summer ale with citra

hops, honey, rosemary, thyme, and pink peppercorns, the perfect flavors to ensure Perdue whole chicken is cooked to delicious perfection as well as any red meat.

We partnered with NYC brewery Torch & Crown to make a brew that tastes great and makes an even tastier chicken. A beer made just for beer can chicken was the perfect thing to pique our audience's interest and get their grills fired up. It has all of the ingredients of a great earned campaign: relevance to our target audience, an unexpected news-worthy hook, and connection to a cultural trend that the competition was ignoring. Perdue operates in a category that's heavily commoditized, so this unique activation completely reimagined the kind of cultural cache a chicken brand can earn.

INSIGHT

Our research yielded an interesting insight: chicken isn’t as beloved on the grill because people cook it like red meat. Beef grills best at higher temperatures than chicken, but people often cook them side-by-side. We needed to change people’s grilling techniques and their minds about chicken.

KEY MESSAGE

Chicken is an unexpectedly great choice for your grill this summer. When you try Perdue Beer Can Chicken, it’ll be the star of your barbeque.

TARGET AUDIENCE

Millennial homeowners inspired by Bon Appetit and the Food Network were looking for something new to impress guests at their cookouts. Beer can chicken was the answer.

CREATION & DISTRIBUTION OF ASSETS

We worked with Torch & Crown Brewery to formulate, brew, package and deliver our bespoke beer. We created a custom can design that informed the visual identity of the campaign and its assets, including a limited-time-offering (LTO) wrap for our whole chicken.

We executed a full-funnel, earned-media-led campaign to get the word out about Perdue Beer Can Chicken. Peak grilling season runs from late May to mid-July, so we needed to be timely and agile with our efforts.

We began with earned media outreach, with Beer Can Chicken Beer allowing us to successfully pitch and provide samples to the consumer-centric food, beverage and lifestyle outlets our target audience loves, including CNN, USA Today, Food & Wine, The Takeout, Bon Appetit, and more. This is notable because Perdue's earned outreach is usually limited to industry publications.

Those earned placements served as a springboard for further

engagement with our audience. Digital tactics like owned social, influencers,

and email blasts directed them to our dedicated microsite. We also engaged retail shoppers with digital coupons and in-store signage to encourage shoppers to give Perdue beer can chicken a shot.

The results demonstrated business impact and measurable

success:

Communications Objective: Make people rethink Perdue chicken’s second-place

status as compared to red meat in the summer.

o +31% rise in online conversation around beer can

chicken in May to July YoY

o Perdue was in the top two queries related to “beer

can chicken” in Google Trends during those same months, meaning that people

were adding our brand name to their searches.

o +4% increase in aided awareness between May and July

2023 YoY

Marketing Objective: Get grillers to grow Perdue chicken’s “share

of grill” over red meat by trying Perdue whole chicken

o +9% increase in consideration YoY

o +16% increase in web traffic from fans wanting to

know more about where they can get Beer Can Chicken Beer to try out for

themselves.

o Generated 3.34 billion earned media impressions

across 692 media placements: .

- 95% of those placements were

positive or neutral in tone

- 59% included Perdue in the headline

- 42% called out the whole chicken

LTO packaging that could be found at retailers.

Commercial Objective: Boost sales of Perdue whole chickens at

large

o +7 % increase in Perdue refrigerated chicken sales

during grilling season YoY (5/28 –7/16)

o +66% coupon redemption rate, well above the industry

standard of 7%

o Excitement from Perdue's valued retail partners, who

showed interest in participating in our future activations. To quote one of

them, "Now this is innovative!"