A 40th anniversary brief usually ends one of two ways: a montage of old logos, or a heritage spot with a piano under it. Partners + Napier went a different direction for Checkers & Rally’s, taking one of 1986’s most recognizable anthems and turning it into “Fryway to the Flava Zone,” an original song with Yung Gravy.
The campaign landed September 7 and pulls the brand into what the team is calling the Flavaverse — an alternate reality where seasoned fries meet a heightened, slightly unhinged version of the 1980s.
Forty years of refusing to be basic
The assignment was to make a big deal of the anniversary in a category where everyone is shouting, while still moving a menu. The agency’s way in was a read on the audience rather than the archive.
“We built around the strategic insight that Checkers & Rally’s isn’t afraid to be an original — just like their audience — when others are so basic,” says Karen Kraut, Chief Strategy Officer at Partners + Napier.
The nostalgia wasn’t about the ’80s
Digging into the audience’s real, media and digital lives turned up a want for comfort, raw expression and absurdism, all of it bundled inside nostalgia. What that nostalgia pointed at was the surprise.
“It wasn’t about memories of the ’80s, it was about content,” Kraut says. “Memes, music, fashion.” Which reframed the job from remembering 1986 to making something new out of it.
From “Danger Zone” to the drive-thru
The through-line, per Rob Kottkamp, Chief Creative Officer at Partners + Napier, is that the brand arrived in 1986 with more flavor and a drive-thru built differently than everyone else’s — and 40 years later it still is. Celebrating that without simply looking backward meant finding a 1986 artifact worth vandalizing.
“Danger Zone” got the treatment. Yung Gravy, sourced through entertainment agency G7, supplied the other half.
“That retro, new-stalgic sensibility is already part of his world,” Kottkamp says.
Gravy’s own framing is blunter: “I’m a known proponent of flipping the Greats and making them ‘Gravy.'”
Miami Vice, leisure suits and the director’s dad
The fun, by Kottkamp’s account, was in the arguing — which ’80s references earned a spot. Miami Vice, leisure suits, malls and double exposures all made the cut.
AI handled the backgrounds that build out the heightened ’80s world. The props were the opposite end of the spectrum: director Meg Gamez of Famous After Death brought in her father, who made them by hand.
“Every step gave us another opportunity to make the idea a little weirder, richer and more fun,” Kottkamp says. “You don’t have to catch every reference to love it — but there are plenty of Easter eggs if you do.”
Where it runs
The music video is live on the brand’s YouTube channel and Instagram alongside Yung Gravy’s, with media across TV, CTV, YouTube, Meta, TikTok, Snapchat and PMax. The menu half of the brief shows up as the limited-time Saucy Flava Max lineup, starting at $3.49.
Nearly 700 locations, four decades and one Kenny Loggins hit later, Kottkamp’s summary holds up: “We’re ’86ing boring, again.”
Learn more
Partners + Napier
Rob Kottkamp LinkedIn
Partners + Napier LinkedIn
Ad Age coverage of the campaign
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