Challenge: Every quarter, Panda Express adds a new Limited Time Offering entrée to their already robust menu. From food that celebrates Chinese New Year, to healthy offerings in the Wok Smart menu, to dishes that just make you feel good, every quarter is another opportunity to tell Panda Express’ unique story as the home of American Chinese food. How can we continue to grow same store sales through these LTOs while also elevating the brand above the competition?
#OrangeChickenLove Campaign
To promote Panda Express’ most popular dish, Orange Chicken, we created a multi-platform campaign consisting of a swag shop, a cross-country food truck tour, a social aggregator based around #OrangeChickenLove, in-store and OOH signage, and a custom microsite to house all the content.
Animated GIFs from OrangeChickenLove.com
Chinese New Year Campaign
To ring in Chinese New Year, we created an informative campaign that worked in tandem with their new LTO, Firecracker Chicken Breast. To promote the dish online, we created several engaging and interactive display ads centered around customary red envelopes and the traditional lantern festival. We even partnered with Ellen to create a new Chinese New Year card deck in her Heads-Up app which she promoted on her show.
Five Flavor Shrimp Campaign
To launch the new Wok Smart entrée, Five Flavor Shrimp, we created a comprehensive online ad campaign targeted to three different audiences: foodies, shrimp-lovers and healthy eaters. Each audience saw differently messaged display and social media ads, and were taken to a modular landing page which dynamically reconfigured itself based on audience.
Results: The results for all three LTOs exceeded goals and expectations. The Five Flavor Shrimp campaign lead to same store sales exceeding goals by nearly 300%. The Chinese New Year campaign lead to increased mentions of the brand through social media and improved the sales mix of the dish compared to the previous year. The #OrangeChickenLove campaign boosted sales of the dish, while the food truck tour consistently ran out of free samples and swag in every location.
Agency: Bailey Lauerman
Role: Associate Creative Director, Head of Digital
