Each year The Cheesecake Factory celebrates the best day of the year – National Cheesecake Day – by releasing a New Flavor of cheesecake. But what happens when the flavor joining luscious line-up is a widely unknown, completely different style of cheesecake of oversea origin? The introduction of the intriguingly unfamiliar Classic Basque Cheesecake, a crustless cheesecake hailing from Spain, provided us with a unique opportunity to celebrate National Cheesecake Day in a fresh new way.
Just as Pixar’s successful release of “Ratatouille” required some extra marketing magic to acquaint audiences with an unfamiliar word, we took a similar edu-tainment approach to introduce Basque Cheesecake. Through a strategic series of organic and paid teasers, sneak previews and a full-fledged trailer, our task was to turn Basque into CCF’s newest blockbuster hit by treating this foreigner as an international man of mystery. After rebranding #NationalCheesecakeDay to #NationalCheesecakeMonth, we embarked on an informative and entertaining month-long campaign to build awareness—and momentum—leading up to Basque’s July 30th premiere date.
Our “pre-launch” phase was all about creating intrigue around the highly-anticipated flavor of the year announcement. After a week of stoking excitement with teaser content, the cliffhanger was resolved by releasing the filled-in version of the photo of Basque, along with the flavor’s phonetic spelling.
To celebrate our fleet of iconic desserts, we spotlighted all 15 specialty flavors released on #NationalCheesecakeDays past. Featuring a multitude of various creative executions, these spotlights were timed strategically to coincide with relevant events of the month – such as featuring S’mores Cheesecake on the Fourth of July. To keep a spotlight on our star, we ran a concurrent educational campaign aimed at answering the question on everyone’s mind – “whats basque, you ask?” – that detailed the historical background of the traditional dish, as well as mouth-watering sensory details.
A few days before premiere day, it became time for an awareness and hype blitz. What's any good movie campaign without a trailer? Paying homage to international spy movies, we created a custom trailer for Basque with all of the blockbuster bells and whistles: a deep-voiced narrator, explosions, and even a rating card (Rated “D” for Delicious.)
The Basque Cheesecake announcement wasn’t the only sweet way to celebrate the holiday. For every slice of cheesecake sold on premiere day, $1 of the purchase was donated to Feeding America, the nation's largest organization dedicated to fighting domestic hunger through a network of food banks. And it only gets sweeter – just as every great movie has residuals, 25 cents from every slice of Classic Basque Cheesecake sold in until the following #NationalCheesecakeDay in 2023 will also be given to the organization.
Over the course of the campaign, our content generated 12.85M impressions, 223.67K engagements, 183.97K likes, 9.5K comments, and 12.31K saves, and 368.3K video views. Because sentiment was so positive from fans across the social ecosystem about our trailer, our client chose to run it on the screens above the mecca of cheesecake – the bakery case – in every single Cheesecake Factory location nationwide. For context, there are 243 brick and mortar locations nationally.
