Starting the New Year feeling sluggish? Confused? Sleepy? This is your brain on drumsticks.
Restaurant chain Boston Pizza is alerting consumers to a strange new malady called “Turkey Brain” in a TV, radio and online campaign running throughout English Canada.
The campaign, which runs through Feb. 13, positions Boston Pizza as a cure for the condition thanks to a special menu featuring more than 100 non-turkey items. The new work from Toronto agency Taxi also introduces the chain’s new tag line: “Here to make you happy.”
A 30-second TV spot opens with a distraught looking man returning home to his worried-looking family. “The confusion. The sluggishness. The excess napping. The confusion–they say I have the turkey brain,” says the man, pulling out an x-ray of his skull that shows an oversized drumstick where his brain should be.
“I think it’s a good, light way to come into the New Year,” said Steve Silverstone, executive vice-president of marketing for Boston Pizza, in Toronto. “And we’re happy that we’ve got the cure.”
PHD Canada oversaw the media buy, which included an extensive presence throughout TSN’s coverage of the IIHF World Junior Championship.
A new Facebook app, meanwhile, consists of an interactive video clip of a man asleep in an easy chair suffering from a full-blown case of turkey brain. The app invites users to rouse him from his turkey-induced stupor, including using an air horn, popping a balloon and crashing cymbals.
Silverstone said the chain’s use of humour is consistent with an approach adopted over the past 12-18 months. “We’re trying to be a little bit more humorous and have an insight that resonates with consumers,” he said.
The chain also commissioned a study by Ipsos Reid, in which 54% of Canadians admitted to over-indulging on certain foods such as turkey during the holidays. The study of 1,024 adult Canadians, conducted between Dec. 23 and 28, also found that 46% of respondents were keen to eat anything but turkey now that the holidays are over.
In Quebec, Boston Pizza will be using radio and out-of-home advertising developed by Montreal-based Zip Communications to promote its “Menu 1-2-3,” promotion, which offers a combination of starter, main and side dish for $9. Messaging in Atlantic Canada, meanwhile, will focus on the chain’s new “Triple Play Menu.”
