From the success of parody content for Quiznos, specifically the Waze Runner for Toasty.TV, 20th Century Fox came calling to strike a partnership with Quiznos for their next installment of the”Maze Runner” movie franchise. We developed a national consumer promotion to support the sequel video parody, along with a social media rollout, and in-store sweepstakes that promoted Quiznos new spicy limited time offer sandwich called the “Satisfire” Ciabatta.
The results were staggering to say the least. In less than a week of its release, the new parody video hit 1 million views on YouTube; and by the end of the second week of its release the video had more than doubled its views to over 2.6 million. Overall traffic for the Toasty.TV site increased by 35k, and subscribers to Quiznos YouTube channel rose by 32%. All of this fueled by a flurry of publicity in over 300 global media outlets including NBC, NY Times, Huffington Post, NRN, Fortune, Ad Week, Ad Age, and many others.
The promotion was so successful that it helped fuel interest in the movie franchise for 20th Century Fox, and the Scorch Trials grossed $30.3mm at the box office for its opening weekend, landing it to #1 film of the weekend debut.
Adweek specifically took notice about the collaboration with Quzinos and 20th Century Fox’s approach with branded content. Chris Ruszowski, VP of Marketing Quiznos said “we believe in creating content marketing that will live on, that is relevant and has a place on Toasty.TV. We feel that content marketing is different than feature investment marketing. We don’t ever try and promote a new sandwich, it’s more about having a relevant conversation with our target audience.”
