Early in 2021, Subway found itself the subject of headlines about a lawsuit which falsely claimed that there was no tuna in the chain’s Tuna Subs.

The truth is that Subway Tuna Subs contain 100% tuna and that Subway only uses tuna caught in the most sustainable way – with Pole & Line fishing. In fact, Subway is a long-term supporter of the International Pole & Line Foundation. Armed with this information, the Subway comms team quickly addressed the issue, promptly getting media outlets to publish the facts about Subway tuna and supporting this positive coverage with a series of ads and a playfully worded Tuna Sub giveaway promotion.

Older consumers were effectively reached with this strategy – but how could the brand make sure that same message filtered through to the Gen Z audiences, a key demographic for Subway?

Animal Crossing, Nintendo’s smash-hit social simulation game, has a huge Generation Z fanbase, with many players from this age group spending hours every week immersed in its world.

As players live on their own islands, one of the activities undertaken by many is fishing using a pole and line, and one of the fish players can catch is Tuna. Just as in real life, it can take players hours before they land one.

The team realised this created the perfect environment for Subway to introduce the subject of sustainability in fishing and talk about its own tuna sourcing policies in a way that would not be jarring or have to compete with hundreds of other messages (compared with social media).

TunaForTuna is a Subway/Animal Crossing tie-in offering players the chance to turn a virtual, line-caught tuna into a free, real-life Subway Tuna Sub, as well as educating them about sustainability in fishing. To win, players had to Tweet a screenshot of their Animal Crossing avatar holding the tuna they’d caught, to @SubwayUK, using the hashtag #TunaForTuna.

The beauty of running a campaign within the Animal Crossing platform is that it doesn’t require time-consuming tech builds, the whole game is one big playground where you can customise anything, which meant TunaForTuna could be turned around at speed.

A video featuring an Animal Crossing avatar in a Subway uniform, introduces details of the competition and talks about the benefits of Pole & Line tuna fishing. To make sure a wider audience heard about TunaForTuna, a group of gaming influencers with significant Twitch followings were brought on board to introduce the promotion and try to win a Sub for themselves. The streamers spent hours fishing for Tuna, even inviting their friends to help out. Their followers actively engaged in the conversation, participating themselves and learning about sustainability along the way. TunaForTuna was also supported with social advertising.

Subway saw a 233% increase in positive sentiment, during the campaign period.

Gamers spent over 400 hours of fishing combined.

With over 18 hours of streamers on Twitch trying to catch Tuna.

The promo video on Twitter received over a million views.