What do you do when you’re a Midwest legacy restaurant brand trying to win over millennials on social media, armed only with a mid-market budget and a very normal $9.99 deal?
You lie.
Perkins American Food Co came to us looking for help reaching a younger audience: millennials who love food challenges, lunch innovations, and internet rabbit holes. But they were competing in a category flooded with endless value messaging, identical price points, and nothing worth stopping the scroll for.
Perkins didn’t need another post saying “Burger. Fries. Pie. $9.99.”
They needed cultural relevance.
They needed a reason to be talked about.
And they needed to establish TikTok as a real platform for the brand.
Our challenge: how do we make a basic value deal feel surprising, disruptive, and native to social culture, without abandoning who Perkins is?
The answer: turn a promotion into a moment. And turn a very real deal into a very fake burger.
The goal was not just awareness, but engagement: to spark conversation, surprise audiences, and prove that Perkins could participate in modern social culture without losing its core identity. Ultimately, we aimed to turn a simple deal into a viral narrative that could introduce Perkins to a new generation and set the tone for its evolving social strategy.
We introduced the world to a brand-new menu item that absolutely did not exist.
MEET: THE PIEDECKER
A burger stacked with classic toppings, a fistful of fries, and an entire slice of lemon meringue pie shoved right in the middle. Equal parts bizarre and irresistible.
We partnered with comedy and lifestyle creator Zachariah Porter (@zzzachariah, 4M followers) to debut the Piedecker as if it were real. He taste-tested it. He reacted honestly. And Perkins’ social media treated it like a legitimate launch. We chose Zachariah not for reach alone, but for his ability to workshop tone, timing, and comedic tension, effectively co-authoring the campaign alongside the brand.
The internet lost its mind.
For nearly two weeks, audiences argued in the comments. They were confused. Horrified. Curious. Weirdly tempted. And most importantly — engaged. This wasn’t another value deal. This was a food lie worth debating.
“I’m kind of speechless over the combination. I guess I’d have to try it, before making any judgment calls.”
“I want to hate it but my inner child is drooling right now.”
“I genuinely need someone to tell me if this is satire. 😂”
“This is INSANE gimme 10 💳💥”
THEN WE CAME CLEAN.
We begged for forgiveness and revealed the truth: while the Piedecker wasn’t real, everything inside it was. Guests could still get a burger, fries, and pie for $9.99 and build their own Piedecker if they dared.
Zachariah led the reveal, responding directly to skeptical comments and debunking the lie in a way that felt playful, self-aware, and perfectly TikTok-native. Creators followed suit, assembling their own Piedeckers, experimenting with different pies (cherry emerged as a fan favorite), and leaning into mukbang, ASMR, and social-first food formats.
In total, 20+ pieces of supporting content fueled the campaign across creators, influencers, and Perkins’ owned channels.
This campaign delivered the strongest social performance Perkins had seen to date:
As Perkins' CEO put it: “We’re not usually gushy people, but this is the absolute best social engagement the brand may have ever seen – just in this first campaign."
Beyond the metrics, Burgers, Fries, Pies and Lies changed how Perkins shows up on social. It set the tone for future campaigns, proved the power of creator-led storytelling, and established a repeatable model: one hero idea per window, built for culture first.
The truth is, the lie worked.
And Perkins has been telling better stories ever since.
