Client Sweet Baby Ray’s
Services Integrated Campaign
Sweet Baby Ray’s grew from a Windy City secret to the undisputed No. 1 barbecue sauce in the U.S. over our 20-year partnership.
Annual sales grew from $45MM to
Household penetration increased from
10% to 68%
Grew a loyal social following of
How the Sauce Became the Boss
We dug deep into the mindset of our sauce obsessed fans and they agreed: Sweet Baby Ray’s is the ultimate ingredient in any meal. Dad’s famous fall-off-the-bone babybacks? That’s Baby Ray’s.
Inspired by this insight, we positioned Sweet Baby Ray’s as the backbone of any good meal with our brand platform: The Sauce is the Boss.
It Was Never About the Burger
As the brand grew, so did our message. We discovered that fans don’t simply grab our sauce. They plan their meals around it. After all, what’s a buffalo wing with no buffalo sauce?
Sauce makes the meal. Without it, dishes have no identity. That’s why we flipped the script by putting sauce at the start of every meal and got our fans to Think Sauce First.
1 box. 30 bottles. 0 chill.
Some show up to a BBQ with a rack of beer, our fans show up with a rack of sauce. For National BBQ Day, we created a tasty and totally unhinged 30-rack featuring nearly every flavor of Sweet Baby Ray’s – and fans took note. Activated across paid social, Instacart and influencers, the 30 Rack culminated in an eBay auction benefiting Feeding America.
The Campaigns Came in Hot
We traded the “Sweet” for some heat to introduce a new line of hot sauces with a logo swap and brand name change to “Hot Baby Ray’s.” And it lit a fire under our fans to try a sweet hot new lineup of sauces.
Say No to Dry January
Each year, more people participate in Dry January: A trend where people go sober for a month.
Commendable… but dryness goes against everything Sweet Baby Ray’s stands for. We told our fans to say No to Dry January just in time for NFL Playoffs so they don’t miss what really makes the game: Sauce.
An old-school PSA-style jingle, influencer content and a pledge-driven campaign hub rallied fans to keep dryness out of the kitchen and win a year’s supply of sauce in time for the big game.
