Rebranding to more meaningfully engage younger consumers isn’t easy: just ask Jaguar or Aberdeen Group, which dropped the vowels from its name in a widely mocked 2021 effort (to say nothing of X, which most people still call Twitter).
Observers this week might have been tempted to add California Pizza Kitchen (CPK) to that list when the casual dining chain relaunched its Instagram with images and videos full of metallic graphics, models in hoodies, noisy electronic beats and taglines including “Fresh. To. Death.” and “Get that bag.”
Fear not: the rebrand effort — timed to the chain’s 40th anniversary — was a stunt, as CPK revealed today (March 27) in a long-form campaign video starring actress and brand fan Busy Philipps. The mockumentary-style video follows Philipps as she visits a rebranded CPK location before having a heart-to-heart with “Dave” from corporate about how the chain should be 40 and fine with it.
The rebrand stunt and new campaign are the culmination of brand identity and positioning work that has been overseen by chief marketer Dawn Keller since she joined the chain one year ago. The effort demonstrated that CPK needed to be rejuvenated, not rebranded.
“When I first came in as CMO, one of the things that was very clear up front was that CPK still has so much brand equity… [it’s] a brand with no baggage, which is wonderful for a brand of this maturity,” Keller said. “But, as is very typical with brands of this age and brands that haven't invested in marketing the way that others do, the brand wasn't top of mind.”
Faking a midlife crisis
To put the brand back in the spotlight, CPK looked for a way to commemorate the chain’s 40th anniversary milestone without the self-congratulatory trappings of brand birthdays.
“For the general population and consumer base we're trying to engage, who cares that a brand is forty?,” the executive said. “What if we turn forty in the way that all humans can relate… which is we're going to deny it by acting out as if we're having a midlife crisis.”
The rebrand stunt was handled with creative and social agency of record Iris, which the chain appointed as part of an agency roster overhaul in the fall, partially due to their “maniacal focus” on and prowess at generating social engagement and getting brands into conversations — a social-first approach required for a brand that doesn’t have a massive advertising budget, Keller said.
In Philipps, an actress and talk show host known for her frank, relatable personality, CPK found an authentic brand ambassador that once worked as a hostess at the chain and one who could serve as a “celebrity sherpa” that could carry the brand to forty and beyond.
“She's climbed the mountain before as a human coming into your forties and realizing that you're great, how to live, embrace it and have a bit a renaissance in your career,” Keller said.
More bang for media bucks
In the same way that Iris helped CPK stretch its ad dollars on creative, digital agency Acadia is helping the chain get more bang for its buck with its media spend, especially as it looks to boost the mockumentary-style clip starring Philipps.
“When you talk to your performance agencies or your media agencies, they'll tell you everything's getting shorter and shorter,” Keller explained. “We're bucking the trend here and putting a two-plus-minute long-form [video] to get it to as many eyeballs as possible.”
To that end, CPK is targeting consumers who are already aware of the brand with the long-form video, trusting the creative enough to run it as a skippable ad on YouTube as a way to keep CPMs down. The brand is also buying sequential ads on Hulu and YouTube, running cutdowns of the “fake rebrand” and “Busy to the rescue” videos to tell the whole story in an efficient way. Additional assets on Meta, Instagram and TikTok will provide “surround-sound” media to extend reach.
Along with campaign media, CPK is engaging consumers by revamping its most popular promotion, a thank you card that contains a hidden prize — from meal discounts to gift cards — that is revealed at their next visit. For the first time, CPK will give customers who scan a QR code on the card and join the chain’s loyalty program a $5 bonus and a chance to win a five-day cruise.
“A lot of our promotions that we run during the year are very much designed to bring people into that [digital] ecosystem so that we're continually growing our marketable database and can have that flywheel of targeted communications that are personalized and more relevant,” Keller said.
