The Rotisserie Channel

Insights, Strategy and the Idea: Founded in 1958 and with 300 restaurants across the country, Swiss Chalet is a Canadian institution. People across the country identify it with delicious rotisserie chicken. But how do we push that thought even further into the public consciousness? We give rotisserie chicken something that’s never been done before – it’s own cable channel. We bring it into the homes of people across Canada and make it famous. Its relevance to Swiss Chalet is unquestionable. In Canada, Swiss Chalet owns rotisserie chicken. How was it relevant to the target audience? It put an end to that age-old question “what do you want to watch?”
Creative Execution: Our solution was a TV channel dedicated to showing delicious rotisserie chicken 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. The campaign began with a teaser video, posted to youtube.com and swisschalet.com. The next day a press release went out to the subscriber website Media In Canada. After the press release hit, word was spreading. “Swiss Chalet” and “rotisserie” both became trending topics on twitter. We responded instantly and used what the public was saying about the rotisserie channel to create a new online video, showcasing quotes from actual tweets. Next came the TV, newspaper, online, and billboard campaign. Simultaneously, people across the country were seeing a television spot, banners ads, and in some cities they saw print ads and billboards as well. All of that culminated in the actual airing of the channel, at which point coupon downloads and sales both skyrocketed.
Results and Effectiveness: The goal was 10,000 coupon downloads over 3 months. Week one, we got 13,707. We collected over 2.5 million Likes from users, 20,000 new Facebook friends, and chicken orders went up 30% almost immediately. According to the cable company, in the first month 1 million households tuned in and stayed tuned in for an average of 8.2 minutes. It was the number 2 trending topic on Twitter and has earned over 36 million free media impressions. Tons of earned media with skyrocketing sales, and we even created a new revenue stream for cable companies. What more could you ask for?