Slim Chickens

The brief

With over 80 restaurants in the US, American restaurant chain Slim Chickens chose Cardiff as its second venue in the UK.

jamjar was appointed to support the launch of the restaurant in Cardiff with the following objectives:

• Develop a campaign to create a buzz about the launch of Slim Chickens in Cardiff, targeting the general public, businesses and students.
• Drive footfall into the restaurant
• Support Slim Chickens’ ongoing marketing plans by encouraging app downloads and an Instagram following

What we did

We delved into the Slim Chickens story to understand the company’s deep south roots and its specialities – freshly cooked chicken, house sauces, modern blues music and awesome hospitality.

We researched hooks that would allow us to leverage awareness locally, as well as influencers with a strong following amongst our target audience.

We also looked into Cardiff’s links with the US, which led us to discover that there are two American ice hockey players playing for the Cardiff Devils (our local ice hockey team) – winner, winner, chicken dinner!

Cardiff Devils’ American sport loving fan base was our ideal target audience, so we partnered with them to help ruffle some feathers.

While the fact the restaurant was new would naturally generate some awareness, we knew we had to do something more to get people to say ‘what the cluck?’, so we brought on board the expertise of food artist Nathan Wyburn of Britain’s Got Talent fame, who specialises in creating iconic celebrity portraits using non-traditional media, such as food.

At the official launch event of the restaurant, Nathan came along to create live portraits of our two American Cardiff Devils using chicken tenders and Slim Chickens’ famous sauces. This activity gave us a great hook for the journalists and influencers in attendance to share social media content live from the event.

Other tactics used included:

• Tasters – in the lead up to the launch Slim Chickens’ chicken van visited locations locally to give people a chance to taste what was to come. This gave us an opportunity to push app downloads and social media.
• Red cards – we distributed Slim Chickens’ red cards to local influencers which entitled them to three free chicken tenders every day until the end of the year.
• Dip it Real Good (student event) – to launch the student discount, we organised an event inviting local students to come down to the restaurant to battle it out in a blindfolded dipping challenge to win free chicken for their student house/halls.
• Father Chickmas – as the restaurant opened the week before Christmas, Nathan created a live portrait of ‘Father Chickmas’ to capture the attention of passing shoppers and give us another hook for social media.
• Blue Monday – as city centre workers were a target for lunch time trade, we organised an event during the week of Blue Monday giving them a chance to sample some free chicken.
• Competitions and giveaways – we offered prizes to several partners who had a strong social media following locally (St David’s Shopping Centre (114k fans), Cardiff Bus (38.4k fans), I Loves the Diff (94.1k fans)). We also ran a promotion with WalesOnline to promote free chicken for those who downloaded the Slim Chickens app.
• Chick it out – local media and bloggers were invited down to sample the offering before the general public and interview Slim Chickens’ American founders.

What We Achieved