2016 Winners & Shortlists

Brief Explanation

Roadster Diner is the Lebanese casual dining market leader, known for consistently great quality and service. Originally inspired by the quintessential American diner, over the past decade the menu offering and style has slowly diversified to accommodate all ages and tastes. Roadster Diner has 15 dine-in outlets and 5 delivery centers across Lebanon, processing 4,500 orders per day. Customers range from age 16 to 60, with the average at 24. As a brand, Roadster Diner projects youthful energy. It has a cool, casual and confident personality and stands for commitment, accountability, diversity, respect and integrity.

The Brief

The client approached us to launch a new limited-time only Black Burger in Lebanon. It would be the first restaurant to introduce a black colored bun in the country. At the same time, the burger craze was at its height in Lebanon with lots of specialized burger outlets popping up offering innovate takes on the burger. Amid fierce local competition, the client wanted to put Roadster back on the map as a trendy burger destination through the launch of the Black Burger, targeting their customers of all ages and create buzz using outdoor media

How the final design was conceived

As the Black Burger’s black bun is flavorless, its only differentiator from other burgers is its color. Thus, we made the color the center of our launch campaign. We created a main visual composed of a simple illustration of a pair of hands on a full black background, using the negative space in between the hands to shape the burger. The look and feel is young, simple and approachable, in line with Roadster’s inclusive brand values and cool, casual and confident personality. The main visual was adapted into a series of outdoor visuals, each illustrating a different playful reason to try the black burger linked to the black color of the burger. The headline of each visual gives the reason to try the new Black Burger and simple illustrated accents added to the visual compliment each headline and bring each to life. The different visuals reference trends within the country or familiar international pop-culture. Each visual targeted to a specific age group and as a whole the series is identifiable to the Roadster’s entire customer base, ranging from age 16 to 60.

Indication of how successful the outcome was in the market

The Black Burger was on the menu at all Roadster dine-in and delivery outlets for just seven weeks. As a result of the hype created through the visuals, Roadster sold 43,000 burgers in this time frame, a record amount of sales that surpassed any other best-selling menu item. Over social media, people requested that the Black Burger becomes a permanent part of the menu while others requested to purchase the posters and the visuals adapted to T-shirts that the Roadster staff wore throughout the promotion. Due to the resounding success and customer requests, Roadster brought back the Black Burger for a limited time for Halloween 2015, again with a record number of sales.