Sonic Drive-In has always empowered customers to order what they want, however they want it. Folks can get their burgers served with tots on top and a side of pickle juice, or create their own drink from almost 200,000 options. So we thought the advertising should follow suit¬ and encourage the same amount of creative play. ThisIsHowYouSonic.com asked customers to create their own ads, to choose the characters, situations and featured food in the spot of their dreams. The most popular spots actually ran on air and were the launch of Sonic’s effort to get customers to interact with the brand in ways as unique and personal as their menu orders.

Our first round of TV and print work put the food forward as the star, and it included a call-out to the site ThisIsHowYouSONIC.com, where visitors were encouraged to create trailers for their own sonic spots. Spot makers were urged to upload the trailers to Facebook, where friends and family members could vote them to Hollywood. The most popular trailers were then turned into actual spots; their creators were flown to Los Angeles, where they worked with the agency to write and shoot spots that eventually aired, featuring the creator’s name in lights.

In the end, the Two Guys made over 20m social and PR impressions in 2 weeks, garnered hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of free press and got thousands of followers to help them win their jobs back. For SONIC it was a win too. Without an increase in spending, they achieved a 10% jump in ad awareness and a 3% sales increase in a month where sales were projected to be flat or negative.