Food for downloads isn't a new trend, so when I saw Chi-fil-A's app at the top of the charts earlier this week I wasn't that surprised even though I didn't know what they're giving away for free.
7-Eleven did the same thing the week before and saw its downloads rise 12x.
But when I looked I saw that Chick-fil-A did something a a little different - they released a game. That's new.
On Monday, Chick-fil-A released Code Moo, a very casual game in Chick-fil-A's app that wins prizes every week for the next month. So, it is free food for downloading the app, but with a twist.
It's hard to tell if people cam for the potential for free food or for the game, but this campaign has driven the most downloads in a single day for the app. Ever!
Downloads rose throughout the day on Monday, pushing the app into the #1 spot in the US App Store, where it stayed overnight for a few hours on Tuesday. According to our App Intelligence, the app saw 173K downloads on Monday and 79K downloads on Tuesday.
That's significantly higher than its daily average of just 22K downloads, according to our estimates. And looking back all the way to 2017, there has not been a single better day for Chick-fil-A's downloads. The closest was 155K downloads in early January of 2020 which was a result of Chick-fil-A giving free nuggest to anyone downloading the app.
Neddless to say, this new campaign is both more successful and likely cheaper for the chain because most players won't get free food. I can already see other food chains duplicating the campaign. What a time to be in branded game development!
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