Wendy’s digital

Wendy’s needed a cohesive digital experience for their landing pages, home page, emails, in app messages, push notifications and countless banners and ads.

Idea

How can we elevate Wendy’s digital work while making sure that things are bold, modern, and accessible while creating efficiencies in all things digital?

Problem

Wendy’s asked VML to take over their digital work including web, digital, and in-app. This was handed off to us from another agency, and we had to in many ways start from scratch in creating a design system while utilizing their existing structures.

Task

I create daily send assets and campaign assets that include landing pages, home page updates, CRM, in-app messaging, in-app updates, push notifications, banners, and more. I also been help with evergreen assets and working to improve library functionality with imagery.

Results

In 2024, Wendy’s saw remarkable growth, surpassing 2023 performance with significantly increased user engagement and a substantial rise in traffic volume in app, mobile, desktop, and tablet.

• +12.35% increase in users

• +8.25% increase in new users

• +31.35% increase in engaged sessions

There was a 41% Y/Y surge in purchasing users, field revenue growth of +56%, and a +67% increase in transactions.

Source: GA4

Saucy nuggs campaign

A national campaign to introduce and promote their new Saucy Nuggs

Idea

Wendy’s needed a cohesive digital and brand experience to launch their new campaign. So Saucy Nuggs were dropped. They are flavor-packed, lip-smacking, and ridiculously saucy. Big bold flavors. Spicy, sweet, savory, saucy. A mission for Wendy’s superfans and gen z nugget lovers, generating hype for their biggest product launch to date.

Problem

How do we work with the brand team and create digital assets for this brand new menu item that are both highly engaging, stand out, and capture the hearts of Wendy’s lovers everywhere? 

Task

I was responsible for exploring how the saucy nuggs campaign could come to life digitally including experimenting with type, texture, imagery, and color. After deciding on a final direction, I applied this to landing pages, a home page takeover, emails, in app messages, push notifications and countless banners and ads.

I collaborated with the brand team to ensure design alignment, explored how to bring the brand vision to life in digital, and created all of the end pieces from web to crm to in-app.

Results

We were able to pivot the in-restaurant soft launch into a “Digital Exclusive Week,” which was a first for Wendy’s. For the week of 6.3-6.9, Saucy Nugg orders could only be placed through the app or website, and all digital comms drove to app downloads or digital ordering destinations

We drove $19.2M in first-party loyalty sales, making this the biggest loyalty sales week in Wendy’s history.

For the first time ever, Wendy’s first-party sales exceeded third-party delivery

• +25% increase in App Daily Active Users

• +12% increase in Average Check Size

• +700% increase in email click-to-purchase rates compared to our May all-campaign average

My team was able to prove that digital programs rooted in customer experience (and ADA compliance) actually do work.