When we discovered the lobstering tradition of throwing back some of every catch to protect the lobster fishery (and bring good luck), that’s when we hit upon our solution: Quiznos would throw back some lobsters too.

So we rescued our first lobster, named Larry, and streamed a live feed of his tank to loneliestlobster.com. From there, we used social media functionality to put fans in control. The more coupon downloads, likes and tweets we received, the more lobsters we sent home to the waters of Maine. And the more lobster subs people ate — ironic, we know.

In just a few weeks, viewers spent more than 1.1m minutes watching our live lobster stream, which led to an average time on site of more than 7 minutes.With social functionality seamlessly integrated into the promotion, news spread quickly. As a result, coupon prints, Facebook ‘likes’ and tweets totalled more than 150,000 from 10 different countries.But most importantly, thanks to a few lucky lobsters and the power of social media, same-store sales climbed to a 4-year high.