BAES Chicken

BAES Chicken opened November 1, 2019 as the first organic fried chicken joint​ in Portland. With the oversaturation of local restaurants on social media, BAES needed to give people a reason to follow yet another food-focused account.

Launch day

We kickstarted local hype with cross promotion via Downtown Portland and a 1000 sandwich giveaway for our grand opening. We successfully created a media opportunity with a line around the block for the newest Micah Camden establishment.

Voice & branding strategy

Rather than relying on stunning, high quality visuals, I decided to focus on building audience engagement with a funny, meme-like personality.

Trademarks of the BAES voice included using lowercase letters, sometimes rambling humor, references to memes, and different fonts to emphasize humor. This proved to be the right move, as we quickly amassed almost 5k followers in five months.

As fans tagged BAES in their IG Stories, BAES reposted each one with a caption (usually short and sweet) using irreverent humor. This significantly bolstered our following as:

• Followers would share the funniest reposts with friends, increasing our overall reach for new potential followers

• Followers getting reposted would screenshot and share their funny Story from BAES onto their own Stories, reinforcing a culture of tagging BAES to get featured (and so on and so forth)

• The more Story mentions we received and featured, the more people would feel compelled to come see what the hype is all about

As a result of its success online, BAES was able to rely on user generated content and purely focus on creating funny content: easy to share and fun to consume.

It's important to note that this strategy specifically worked for BAES because of the wide demographic appeal of fried chicken sandwiches. Noting that, it became even more crucial to flaunt a distinct voice and personality due to the omnipresence of popular fried chicken sandwiches already available in Portland.