After the $5 Ramen Challenge was a success, Yuu Japanese Tapas continues to work with us to this day!
That initial campaign got them to get more creative with their marketing campaigns, and the Beer Ramen is their most polarizing one yet.
As with most of our campaigns, we started with a discovery session with the client to discuss their goals for their next one, and brainstorm potential ideas. What came out was that we had to create something thought-provoking that would generate controversy amongst the audience.
There was a delicate balance that we needed to adhere to - as we wanted to create a new item that still paid respects to the restaurant's cuisine.
Our aim was to create a dish that would seem controversial at first glance, but actually pays homage to cold noodles - a classic Asian dish in many different cultures - when one takes a closer look.
The ramen noodles are submerged in a cold broth made with bonito (fish) flakes, while the layer of foam at the top is made with egg whites and gelatin. To top it all off, the dish was served in a large glass stein with broth that looks very similar to beer.
Sure enough, this generated a lot of buzz and controversy on social media. It eventually made its way to multiple subreddits and became a top trending post.
After that, we leveraged a mix of influencer marketing and PR to help skyrocket the growth of the Beer Ramen trend.
After seeing the positive social media response, we started to amplify our reach using Instagram foodies and paid social ads. That is when the restaurant started getting messages trickling into their DMs from media companies outside of Vancouver - asking questions about the Beer Ramen and permission to use some of our images.
And then, an idea hit me.
I created a new Facebook Ads campaign, specifically targeting occupations related to the media industry (ie. journalists, producers, and writers).
After a few days running that campaign, our inbox BLEW up! We had media outlets such as BuzzFeed, INSIDER, NowThis, NextShark, DailyMail, FoxNews, National Japanese TV Networks, and more, reaching out with requests for permission to license the Beer Ramen videos and feature the story on their platforms.
We even had the team from BuzzFeed's ‘Bring Me’ and INSIDER, fly to Vancouver to shoot their own video feature of the Beer Ramen.
Some of the media features:
The Beer Ramen campaign generated a social reach of over 60+ MILLION people and acquired over 30+ media features (worth approx. $100,000+ in Earned Media).
