Arby's came to us with a genuinely new product idea: Steak Nuggets, a bold, juicy reinvention of what a nugget could be, launching alongside two new formats, the Steak Nugget Sandwich and the Steak Nugget Bowl. The brief was to make the launch feel unmistakably Arby's: unapologetically meat-obsessed, fun, chaotic and TikTok-native, not a polished product ad.

Here's how we built the campaign, and the results it delivered.

The Strategy: Blast Off, Then Sustain the Crave

The creative approach followed a clear two-phase structure designed to match how TikTok audiences actually behave: hit hard on day one, then keep the craveability going.

Phase 1: Short-Form Hype & Craveability. Fast, trend-led TikToks captured the excitement of trying Steak Nuggets for the first time: POVs, first-bite reactions, trending audio and chaotic group-chat energy, all built around the line "your nugget just got steaked". This phase was about immediacy: big reactions, bold statements and crave-forward storytelling designed to blast off at launch.

Phase 2: Longer-Form Food Storytelling. Once the initial hype landed, creators shifted into slower-paced, visually rich content: late-night cravings, study breaks, road trips and game-day hangs. This phase brought the bite-by-bite steak texture, the mac-and-cheese pull from the Steak Nugget Bowl and the unwrapping of the Steak Nugget Sandwich to life, showing off the depth of the full lineup rather than just the headline product.

The Creator Mix

We partnered with 40 TikTok creators across three tiers, split across all three products in the lineup so that Steak Nuggets, the Sandwich and the Bowl each got real, first-hand coverage:

• 15 Nano creators (3 posts each)

• 15 Micro creators (2 posts each)

• 10 Mid-Tier creators (2 posts each)

That's 95 total pieces of content, weighted towards Midwest and Southeast markets where Arby's over-indexes, and built from a mix of foodie, comedic and lifestyle creators who could make Arby's meat-obsessed personality feel fun and cultural rather than corporate.

The Results

The campaign didn't just hit its targets, it significantly overshot them.

Organic performance alone generated 1.6M total audience reach, 5.4M views and a 337.5% average view rate across all 95 posts, well above what the creators' combined followings would predict on their own.

Once paid media was layered in, the numbers scaled sharply:

• 57.3M total views, 23.2M above target

• 802.5K total engagements at a 1.4% average engagement rate

• 98.3K clicks, 32.7K above target

• $0.003 average CPV and $3.40 average CPM, both landing among the strongest value performers on the platform

• 95 of 95 ads ranked in TikTok's top 25% for impressions and clicks in the Food & Beverage category, with 73 of 95 also ranking in the top 25% for CPM

What Each Tier Brought to the Table

As with most tiered creator campaigns, the real story is in how the tiers complemented each other rather than competed:

• Mid-Tier creators were the MVPs of the campaign. They delivered the strongest full-funnel impact, with rich storytelling and polished visuals driving 22.3M views, 432K engagements and a 1.94% engagement rate, the highest engagement depth of any tier.

• Micro creators were the scalable mid-funnel performers, blending foodie credibility with comedic energy to generate 17M views and 183K engagements at a 1.08% engagement rate and a $0.003 CPV, building mass awareness efficiently and at scale.

• Nano creators were the efficient reach builders, leaning into lo-fi, authentic first-bite reactions that felt genuinely native to TikTok. They generated 17.9M views and 187.5K engagements at a 1.05% engagement rate, again at just $0.003 CPV.

Individual standouts included one Mid-Tier creator's video, which alone crossed 12.5M views, and a Nano creator's post that hit 4.9M, proof that the right creator-product pairing can massively outperform expectations regardless of tier.

The Audience Reacted, Not Just Watched

The comment sections told their own story. Sentiment was overwhelmingly positive, with audiences reacting to the bold "your nugget just got steaked" messaging, the first-bite reveals and the sheer novelty of a steak-forward nugget from a brand known for being unapologetically meat-obsessed. Rather than passive scrolling, the campaign generated genuine conversation across all three product formats.

Why It Worked

The Steak Nuggets launch proved that a genuinely new product idea benefits from creators who are given room to react honestly rather than deliver scripted praise. Splitting the creator roster across three products (Nuggets, Sandwich and Bowl) meant the full lineup came to life through real first impressions, not just a single hero shot. And the two-phase structure meant the campaign could blast off with high-energy hype before settling into the kind of story-driven, crave-forward content that keeps a product in the cultural conversation well past launch day.

The result: a campaign that didn't just meet expectations, it smashed them, turning a new nugget format into one of the platform's strongest-performing Food & Beverage launches of the period.

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