BJ's

BJ's Restaurants — "Call a Foul"

Social Campaign with DBM Group · Development, Production & Post

March Madness is a full-court press for attention. Every bar, every wing joint, every couch in the country is fighting for the same set of eyeballs, and BJ's wanted a piece of it. Our partners at DBM Group came to us with a brief that had real teeth: take the energy fans are already throwing at their screens and turn it into people walking through BJ's doors. Social-first. Made for the feed. Built to travel.

That was the play. Our job was to run it — casting, style, production, and post, start to finish.

Casting the Ref

Every good bit needs a ringleader, and this one lived or died on a single character: a ref-slash-manager hybrid with a whistle, a rulebook, and zero chill. We cast for comic timing over everything else — someone who could blow a call dead serious and make you laugh doing it. Get that wrong and the whole thing goes flat. We found our guy in Jonny Martini, and the moment he picked up the whistle it clicked. The Ref didn't just anchor the campaign, he stole every scene he stepped into.

Dialing the Look

Social scrolls fast, so the work had to hit faster. We built a style that read in an instant — bright, punchy, unmistakably BJ's — and framed every shot to grab you in the first second and pay off before the thumb moves on. Fun, not fussy. Loud on purpose.

Calling the Fouls

Then we put the Ref to work. Each spot flagged a "foul" no rulebook covers but every fan knows by heart — the Wing Sauce Violation, the Takeout Violation, the Indecisive Order, the Last Wing Standoff, a little Unsportsmanlike Conduct, and a Pizookie Influencer who may have crossed a line or two. We shot the whole series on location at a working BJ's in Cerritos, which handed us a hard window: 4am call, wrapped and out by noon so we never got in a single guest's way. We built the world to hold together clip to clip, then cut it in post for maximum snap: tight, fast, funny, and ready to run anywhere the game was on.

The Final Whistle

The work scored. BJ's saw the lift where it counts — engagement up on social, and more fans trading the couch for a booth. Casual viewers and die-hards bought in alike, and BJ's went from a place to catch the tournament to part of the madness itself.

The Ref's got plenty of calls left in him. We'll be ready when the whistle blows again.