At the end of 2021, SONIC Drive-In, a national QSR in the US, faced a problem. People knew of SONIC, but the brand wasn’t on the tip of culture’s tongue or breaking through to younger audiences. The ask was clear: drive SONIC into the collective consciousness by making it more culturally relevant to a gen z audience.

With help from SONIC’s popular core Slush menu, we set out to create something to coincide with the onset of Slush-drinking weather in the spring. We had seven months and an initial budget of $400k to pull answer the question, "How can we design something that promotes SONIC’s iconic Slush flavors in a way that can also culturally update SONIC’s brand image?"

Customers need never fear choice paralysis again because the SONIC Slush Ring is here to help guide people to their perfect Slush satisfaction by showing them exactly what type of flavor they’re in the mood for.

The SONIC Slush Ring is the first of its kind - creating a lengthy and specific process from ideation to production. With Y2K’s influence of bright colors, futuristic patterns, gradients, and fun motifs in mind, the SONIC brand identity remained at the forefront of the visual presentation. The campaign used the iconic SONIC drink cup as the build of the ring and incorporated the brand colors, fonts and logo into the assets - all with the beloved Slush Menu at the core of the idea.

With the goal of putting SONIC at the center of culture, the strategy was based in identifying a clear audience and stepping further into their world before attempting to pull them into the brand’s world. With an age bracket of 18 - 24 year olds as guidance, but a shared attitude as the defining mark, a clear profile was created centering in those who call themselves the coolest kid in their friend group.

As the Y2K comeback began amping up in popular culture, TikTok became submerged in nostalgia, opening up a dreamy opportunity for SONIC to reach this new found audience - displaying 35.7 million views on #resinrings and 2 billion views on #2000sthrowback. SONIC asked the internet THEIR Slush mood, with all intersections of the ring connected with #SONICSlushRing.

As if turning a mood ring into a customized SONIC Slush Ring wasn’t enough, we brought all the bright colored gradients and fun motifs witnessed in a teen magazine to the entire campaign. With our retro celeb references in hand, we created QVC-inspired videos for our hero social posts and designed accompanying apparel so spot-on, you’d think it was ripped from an early 2000’s mall-front store. But what about all the people who wouldn’t be able to get their hands on a ring? We created a companion digital experience - the Slush mood-predicting mechanism in the form of a SnapChat filter.

The SONIC brand identity remained at the forefront of the visual presentation, using the iconic SONIC drink cup as the build of the ring and incorporating the brand colors, fonts and logo into the assets.

With an overall goal of raising top of mind awareness, the main KPI for this concept was reach, specifically media impressions and social views. The Slush Ring was picked up by 195 publications and earned 99 million impressions, including key cultural outlets like HYPEBEAST. The QVC-inspired social videos and a little help from influencers helped us reach 13.4 million views across Instagram and TikTok and 83 million paid media impressions across all social channels. SONIC picked up 80k new TikTok followers along the way. The SnapChat lens itself received a 7.8s average lens play time, meaning people spent 34% longer on our Slush Ring lens than the category average. Within just two weeks, we sold over 1,975 Slush Ring, and all together the campaign generated well over 200 million total impressions.