Boston Pizza was looking for an innovative way to tell people it had improved its ribs, which were now meatier and saucier than ever before, but it had been years since it had advertised its rib offering. With ribs being a popular menu item among casual dining restaurants and competitors, like Montana's (which practically owns communication on ribs), Boston Pizza needed to stand out. So it invested in a separate, mainly social initiative with the objective of appealing to rib lovers everywhere with an invention all their own, a revolution in rib-eating apparel, the Rib Stain Camo T-shirt.
The goal of this campaign was to drive trial and generate additional buzz and impressions for Boston Pizza's new ribs. Specifically, the chain wanted to generate 100,000 YouTube views and sell 1,000 Rib Stain Camo T-shirts, all resulting in increasing overall Boston Pizza rib sales.
Playing off the insight and cultural truth around how messy ribs can be since they're eaten with your hands, the agency invented a product that would allow rib lovers everywhere to eat ribs with confidence, without worrying about hiding embarrassing rib droppings or splatters again. It introduced the Rib Stain Camo T-shirt, the only T-shirt of its kind that lets you make a mess without ever looking like one. Rib Stain Camo was launched before BP's full summer communication plan to help generate buzz around ribs, and the T-shirt was launched before the official launch of BP's new ribs.
Rib Stain Camo communication began the week of June 10, 2013, when media supported a 60-second version of an informational video selling Rib Stain Camo T-shirts online, driving to RibStainCamo.com. The video ran in combination with online banners driving to the site, PR video seeding and blogger outreach, as well as promoted tweets and trends on Twitter that targeted rib enthusiasts, food lovers, and the main target of dads. No BP branding was included on these properties for the first two weeks, with the exception of a coupon for $10 off a rib dinner at BP with T-shirt purchase.
As the campaign progressed, BP branding was added and a 15-second cut-down version of the video began airing on TV directly after a 15-second BP ribs commercial. The overall communication plan was executed in a way that the inventors of Rib Stain Camo would be gradually revealed throughout the course of the campaign by adding Rib Stain Camo to Boston Pizza properties and vice versa. The success and demand for Rib Stain Camo was bigger than anyone could have imagined.
After the first 24 hours, it had achieved over 230,000 impressions and 15,000 YouTube views. At the end of the second week of the campaign, there were 30,377 visitors to RibStainCamo.com from over 10 countries, 193,511 views on YouTube, and 4.6 million Twitter impressions. When TV activity began in week three of the campaign, the brand sold out its initial inventory of 1,000 T-shirts and had to order more. By the end of the fourth week, it had sold over 1,700 T-shirts. During the fifth week, they sold out again, so more were ordered. At the end of the campaign, there were 220,863 YouTube views, 123,706 visitors to RibStainCamo.com, 5.4 million Twitter impressions, and a final count of 2,320 owners of Rib Stain Camo T-shirts, with BP rib sales increasing (sales results kept confidential).