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.

​Main takeaway:
Visuals draw people in. Words get them to stay. 

Overarching strategy

We kickstarted local hype with cross promotion via Downtown Portland and a 1000 sandwich giveaway for our grand opening. This created an opportunity to grab media attention 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, only hindered by the sudden onset of the pandemic.

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 & 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 that was easy to share and fun to consume. It's important to note that this strategy specifically worked for BAES because of the universal popularity of fried chicken sandwiches (AKA wide demographic appeal). Noting that, it became even more crucial to have a distinct voice and personality online due to the omnipresence of popular fried chicken sandwiches already available in Portland.

Browse BAES' feed here.