Perdue Farms' social media campaign with actor Wayne Brady reminding 2025 Super Bowl viewers to “wing it” with the new Air Fryer Ready Crispy Wings helped drive sales, brand awareness and consumer engagement.
As a result of the campaign, Perdue Farms was named the 2025 Chicken Marketer of the Year. The trophy was presented at the 2025 Chicken Marketing Summit held at the DeSoto Savannah in Savannah, Georgia, on July 29.
The Chicken Marketer of the Year award honors exceptional efforts in retail, foodservice, direct-to-consumer, producer/integrator organizations and companies who have demonstrated innovative marketing and creative excellence in promoting chicken consumption.
Previous winners include Chick-fil-A, Farmer Focus and Wayne-Sanderson Farms.
The Chicken Marketing Summit is the essential networking and educational conference for poultry business leaders. Serving a unique cross section of the chicken supply chain, the Chicken Marketing Summit explores issues and trends in food marketing and consumer chicken consumption patterns and purchasing behavior.
The Chicken Marketer of the Year award is presented by Poultry Future, WATTPoultry.com and WATT Global Media.
Winging it through the Super Bowl
Perdue Farms achieved a 12% year-over-year sales increase during Super Bowl week 2025 through a unique marketing strategy of live social media content featuring comedian Wayne Brady. In addition, the campaign generated the second-highest incremental return on ad spend (iROAS) in company history while building significant brand awareness during one of the year's biggest poultry consumption periods.
The integrated marketing approach centered on a live improv performance by Brady during the Super Bowl, promoting Perdue's Air Fryer Ready Crispy Chicken Wings across TikTok and Instagram. Rather than investing the estimated $8 million required for traditional Super Bowl commercial placement, Perdue developed a multi-channel strategy that surrounded consumers with teaser content leading up to the live event.
A pivot from traditional advertising
The campaign's core innovation lay in its departure from conventional Super Bowl marketing tactics. With Americans consuming 1.47 billion chicken wings on Super Bowl Sunday, Perdue recognized the opportunity to capture consumer attention without the premium costs associated with traditional Big Game advertising.
"We challenged ourselves to breakthrough and build awareness with consumers," Perdue wrote in its award nomination. "Instead of the overly produced, high price-tagged Super Bowl commercials and activations, we are going to do something that no brand is bold enough to do. Wing it."
The media strategy unfolded in two distinct phases. In the weeks leading up to the Super Bowl, the company deployed teaser content across multiple touchpoints including national television, connected TV and online video, organic and paid social media, digital display advertising, email campaigns and website takeovers.
The pre-game phase included a significant branded entertainment integration with CBS Morning, featuring celebrity chef Valerie Bertinelli and CBS anchors in more than six minutes of partnered content. The segment included multiple verbal mentions of Perdue Air Fryer Ready Crispy Wings, prominent logo and product placement and key messaging emphasizing the wings' simplicity, quality and 18-minute cooking time. This integration alone delivered 12% over its promised impressions, reaching 1,127,345 total impressions across Facebook and YouTube.
A comprehensive virtual media tour leveraged the novelty of the "first-ever live improv show to take place during the Big Game," generating coverage in high-profile outlets including People magazine, Business Insider and multiple local broadcast placements.
A sophisticated text alert system delivered four strategic messages from Wayne Brady's persona, beginning with audience engagement requests and culminating in real-time game day notifications. Email campaigns and website pop-ups maintained consistent brand messaging throughout the campaign period.
Measurable success across several KPIs
The campaign's success was measured through primary and secondary metrics.
Primary indicators included the 12% sales increase during Super Bowl week, the iROAS performance and an 8-point increase in unaided awareness in key regions. Secondary metrics showed equally strong results: TV activity and branded entertainment over-delivered impressions by 15%, digital campaigns achieved high engagement rates and strong click-through performance and Perdue's social media following increased by more than 200% compared with average weekly growth.
The campaign's digital components demonstrated particularly strong performance metrics. Teaser content running from January 24 through February 8 achieved twice the click-through rate compared with Perdue benchmarks, indicating high audience interest. YouTube advertising focused on contextual targeting toward football content and chicken buyers, extending awareness beyond Perdue's core target demographic.
Attend the 2026 Chicken Marketing Summit
The 2026 Chicken Marketing Summit will be held at the Innisbrook Resort in Palm Harbor, Florida, on July 27-29, 2026.
Registration will open in spring 2026.
