Wingstop and Barkley Curate First-ever Live Periscope Auction

When Wingstop and Barkley created the first-ever Periscope auction, they not only found a new way to give merchandise away, but a new way to interact with fans. After 15 one-minute auctions where people competed for everything from beach cruisers to a year’s worth of wings by tapping hearts, Wingstop had racked up more hearts than any other restaurant brand—and even the White House.

Wingstop has long made Periscope a priority, broadcasting musicians and artists from a Wingstop green room, and breaking the news of Paxton Lynch’s draft by the Denver Broncos five minutes before ESPN. 

So it turned to Periscope again to launch its new Wing Shop, an online merchandise store, and to celebrate National Chicken Wing Day on Thursday and Friday. 

It had 15 different Thump auctions ('Thump' is Wingstop parlance for tapping hearts on Periscope), for items such as Wing Shop goods to items important to Wingstop’s consumers: custom Nike shoes, a signed vinyl record from Talib Kweli, and a $1500 travel and concert VIP package.

The results were great: 

- Online sales made up 20% of Wingstop's sales for the day, compared to 10% last year.

- Total live views: approx. 26,000

- Total heart growth on Periscope: from 9,432 to 826,118; Over 8600% growth in 33 hours; this is higher than any other restaurant. (Taco Bell, by comparison, has roughly 88,000)

- Prize with highest Thumps: Year Supply of Wingstop (Holding screen & game = 70,107)

- 7,560 Twitter mentions; 5.25 mentions per minute; Almost 100% increase per average day; Social sentiment: 80% positive, versus 68% on average day.

Because Periscope doesn’t offer brands detailed tracking, Barkley and 40Digits, a Barkley partner company who led the technical development, had to create a custom method to track the hearts and create a leaderboard.