Tropical Smoothie Wins Franchise Innovation Award for Best Big Budget Campaign

Tropical Smoothie Cafe recently won one of the highest honors in Franchise Update's annual Franchise Innovation Awards with the Overall Award for the Best Big Budget Campaign. 

With the launch of its Tropic Bowl menu category, Tropical Smoothie sought to capitalize on the growing popularity of bowls with a new line of products that fit with the brand’s offering of smoothies, wraps, and flatbreads. The brand also sought to use this opportunity to achieve the secondary objective of creatively refreshing the “You’re on Tropic Time Now” campaign, which has been running successfully since 2020.

Tropical Smoothie created the Tropic Time Concierge campaign, featuring Saturday Night Live's Chloe Fineman, who plays a concierge character who walks the viewer through the “Tropic Time” experience at a metaphorical tropical resort. She introduces the new line of bowls, calling them “five-star luxury,” then closes with a warm and playful message of “You’re On Tropic Time Now.” 

Two months after the campaign started, the average cafe sold almost three times the volume of Tropic Bowls compared to what was sold during the product testing stages. The Acai Bowl was the leading seller and had the highest sales of any item on the Tropical Smoothie Cafe menu. The attention generated by this new line of bowls impacted the business more broadly, as the number of total entrees and smoothies per check increased 4.3% in the first several months after the launch of the campaign.

HERE is a video of Tropical Smoothie Vice President of Brand Marketing Emily Ciccone discussing the strategy and success behind the Tropic Time Concierge campaign around the launch of its Tropical Bowl menu category. 

You can read more about the campaign in an interview with Ciccone in the Q3 issue of Franchise Update magazine.