Wendy's 'Keeping Fortnite Fresh' wins Social & Influencer Grand Prix at Cannes
Jury Chair PJ Pereira says the in-game masquerade has all the makings of the beginning of a new trend
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“Keeping Fortnite Fresh,” Wendy’s in-game demonstration of the evils of frozen beef, won the Social & Influencer Grand Prix at the Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity, narrowly beating out Nike’s “Dream Crazy,” which has been the darling of this year’s show.
VMLY&R created a digital avatar in the hit multiplayer battle royale videogame that looked suspiciously like Wendy’s own namesake. This red-hooded character showed up in the game and promptly started to ignore all of the other players, typically the main targets.
Instead, she entered burger joints inside the game’s unpopulated cityscape, located the freezers and destroyed them. Wendy’s, after all, never uses frozen beef. This destructive escapade was streamed on Twitch where millions could watch, and the community joined in the rampage with glee. Eventually, the game’s developers swapped out all of the freezers with facilities for fresh burgers.
“There’s so much to love about this—a brand jumping into a new form of social that Fortnite represents,” says Social & Influencer Jury Chair PJ Pereira, co-founder and creative chairman at Pereira & O'Dell. “There’s the mischievousness of this, the nimbleness of going there and figuring out the Little Red Riding Hood character looks just like their main character.”
Read more about the campaign over at AdAge.com.
