Brief:

• Sandwich chain Jimmy John's is launching a multichannel campaign for its $3 Little John sub today, a promotion that includes its first nationwide augmented reality (AR) Snapchat Lens with a mobile game. Rapper Lil' Jon appears in a national TV spot and behind-the-scenes video on YouTube, per a press release shared with Mobile Marketer.
• The AR game gives Snapchat users 30 seconds to catch as many falling sandwiches as they can in their mouths, which are digitally shrunk, making the game more challenging. Snapchat users can take selfies from the game and share them on the image-messaging platform.
• The $3 Little John is available at participating Jimmy John's locations nationwide and through delivery. The company doesn't rely on third-party delivery services, as highlighted in a campaign last February that disparaged Grubhub and Seamless for poor service.

Insight:

Jimmy John's campaign is notable for gamifying a Snapchat Lens, which uses AR technology to overlay digital images on a live selfie in the popular image-messaging app. The game content urges Snapchat users to engage with an amusing branded experience they control, instead of throwing a potentially intrusive ad at them. The game could encourage people to share their selfies on Snapchat, boosting the campaign's overall reach among the platform's millions of users.

By running a campaign on Snapchat, Jimmy John's looks to be targeting tech-savvy younger consumers who are more likely than older generations to consume content on mobile devices and participate in social media games. About 62% of U.S. adults ages 18 to 29 use Snapchat, making it the fourth-most popular social platform after YouTube, Facebook and Instagram for that demographic, per a survey by Pew Research Center.

Jimmy John's appears to be making purposeful inroads with mobile platforms in its advertising and restaurant technology, as seen a year ago with its introduction of tap-and-go payments and emphasis on mobile orders.

Meanwhile, Snapchat in April 2018 introduced the AR gaming format, which it calls "Snappables," to let users control games with facial movements and gestures. The company followed that introduction in June 2018 with branded Snappables, which Jimmy John's is now experimenting with. Bud Light, Dunkin' Donuts and King Digital, maker of the Candy Crush mobile game, were among the first brands to create sponsored Snappables as part of their marketing campaigns. Snapchat parent company Snap has said AR lenses are one of the app's most popular features, with 70% of its users AR effects to the images they share on the app, according to Q1 company metrics.