Competition is rife between restaurants who hope to dominate the student market. Wagamama made the decision to turn away from the trend of using heavy discounts to attract customers. They were concerned this may put them at a disadvantage with their student customers and wanted to re-engage with students across the UK.

Wagamama wanted to re-engage with students in higher education in the UK, resulting in increased brand awareness and students visiting selected outlets located across the country. Specifically they had two aims: 1) To increase student custom in pre designated outlets in the UK. 2) To grow their student following on social media networks.

This project was initially tasked to agency Albert who came to BAM to co-ordinate the campaign. Together we recognised the importance of experiential marketing in engaging with students and put together a combined social media and experiential campaign. We took Wagamama on-campus in a UK-wide road trip to 12 universities. Two students staffed the Wagamama vehicle serving noodles to other students across the UK and blogging simultaneously on social media.

During the 4 weeks after the campaign, student custom in targeted outlets rose by more than 80%. Wagamama had over 30,000 active members on the Noodle Tour social network community and 800,000 views of their Facebook page.

Experiential marketing has high impact with students, especially when it's taken on campus. Engaging with students face-to-face on-campus where they feel the most comfortable has proved successful with campaigns time and again. Our National Freshers Report 2014 reveals that 80% of brands find face-to-face experiential advertising most effective when targeting students. Using student staffing can increase the perceptiveness of students by relevance amongst the student community.