Wendy’s had a presence at the X Games, but presence alone doesn’t earn credibility. The goal wasn’t visibility. It was relevance. To connect with a culture built on authenticity, Wendy’s needed content that spoke the language of the community, not ads dressed up as content.
Action sports culture rejects anything that feels forced. You can’t show up with a camera crew and expect to matter. Get it wrong and you don’t just get ignored, you get rejected. The challenge was finding a way to participate without breaking trust, while still showing up in a way the brand could own.
Instead of sponsoring from the outside, we worked from the inside. Former pros, past medalists, and people still in the mix helped shape the work end to end. This wasn’t influencer marketing. It was inner-circle marketing. We let insiders lead, prioritized cultural fluency over brand control, and created moments that felt native to the community. Bacon Boards beat banner ads every time.
We built a creator-first campaign designed to move at the speed of the moment. Over two compressed days, I worked shoulder to shoulder with the creative team and X Games crew to shape content in real time. Fast-turn shoots. Minimal resets. Handheld grit and field energy over commercial polish. The goal wasn’t perfection. It was proximity. The work earned attention by showing up the way the audience does: close, in the thick of it, and inside the action.
Select moments from the work.