For Panda Express superfans, Honey Sesame Chicken Breast is legendary. In fact, since the last time HSCB was in stores, there were over 2,548 mentions of the dish across the Internet. We even noticed that, no matter what was being discussed, a Panda Fan was almost guaranteed to ask for its return. Our team was tasked with bringing back a fan favorite—and inviting new fans to join in the sweet Honey Sesame goodness.
We decided to give credit where credit was due.
The fans who made Honey Sesame Chicken Breast one of the brand's highest performing LTOs and most-requested dish are the reason Panda Express brought it back. And so, the “Brought to You by You” campaign was born.
We teased its return with personalized responses.
We set out to thank our Honey Sesame advocates by responding to fans who asked for Honey Sesame Chicken to come back. On Twitter and Facebook, we dropped drool-worthy honey-sesame-coated gifs to tease its return. For Instagram we responded with honey sesame fortunes.
These responses were in the comments section, in response to fan posts, and in our own feed.
Challenges Issued.
Challenges Accepted.
To capitalize on fan passion and grow the fandom, we launched the “Brought To You By You” challenges on Instagram and Facebook Stories, asking fans to prove the depths of their love with a new challenge each week. We had fans dancing, singing, and changing their names—all to win the sweet reward of free Honey Sesame Chicken. We even got SF 49ers tight end and self-proclaimed Honey Sesame Chicken superfan, George Kittle, in on the action.
Challenges
We kept fans engaged
with a little Kittle.
An all-out love fest.
This was the brand’s most participatory social campaign to date, driving an unprecedented rise in conversation and fan involvement. In addition to growing brand love, the campaign helped Panda Express beat sales goals for the dish. It even sold out early at almost 40% of their stores. All because we gave credit where it was due: to our passionate, amazing fans.
1,697
Fans Accepted the challenge
98%
Postive / Negative Sentiment
849%
Increased HSCB conversation in the first month (663% increase in the first week) *1
270%
Increased HSCB chatter from 2018 to 2019 launch week *2
1. Brand watch 2019 pre-launch month baseline August 16 – September 16 2019, 167 mentions
Brand watch 2019 launch month September 17 – October 17 2019, 1,490 mentions
Brand watch 2019 pre-launch week baseline September 11-16 2019
Brand watch Campaign to-date September 17 – December 3, 2,341 mentions
2. 2018 launch baseline August 15th – 20th 2018, 194 mentions
2019 launch week September 23rd – 29th 2019, 719 mentions
