Hopdoddy Birthday Hop

325k gameplays from 13k players

80% reduction in cost per download, compared to other campaigns

4–5X uplift in app downloads versus the usual run rate

Turning a brand anniversary into a high-performing app and loyalty lever

Milestone anniversaries often fall into a familiar pattern: blanket discounts, free items, or short-term offers that create a spike, then disappear.

For Hopdoddy’s 15-year anniversary, the marketing team wanted something different, an activation that felt celebratory and on-brand, but also delivered meaningful commercial outcomes.

Internally, the campaign needed to:

Drive app downloads and engagement
Convert engagement into verified behaviour
Be low-risk to execute operationally
Feel like something customers genuinely wanted to engage with

As Tom Lockwood, Director of Marketing at Hopdoddy, put it: “We didn’t want to just give everyone a free birthday item. The question was: how do we level this up and do something people actually enjoy?”

A game built around memory, place, and brand roots

The concept for Birthday Hop came directly from Hopdoddy’s roots. Founded on South Congress Avenue in Austin, the brand wanted to use its anniversary to reconnect customers with where the business began. Rather than telling that story through static content, the team decided to turn it into an interactive experience.

Birthday Hop was an endless runner game, with players jumping from rooftop to rooftop, collecting coins and avoiding obstacles along the way. The game was set against a stylised Austin skyline, with platforms inspired by iconic South Congress landmarks, including the original Hopdoddy location.

Tom said: “The concept was how do we take folks down memory lane, literally hopping down South Congress, to celebrate the 15th birthday.”

The idea was simple: let players hop through the brand’s history, combining nostalgia, local pride, and progression. This approach allowed the campaign to resonate with long-time customers while still feeling accessible and playful for newer audiences.

Birthday Hop, Hopdoddy's Branded Game by Peek & Poke

“If you’ve ever held a joystick or controller, you already know how to play. That familiarity matters.”

Tom Lockwood, Director of Marketing, Hopdoddy

Rewards that felt earned

Playable only through the Hopdoddy app, the campaign relied heavily on rewards. To balance motivation with control, the team integrated fully with Thanx, Hopdoddy’s guest engagement software, meaning rewards were:

Points-based
Skill-based
Issued only to authenticated loyalty accounts
Tracked end-to-end from unlock to redemption

Rewards were tied to score milestones, scaling in value with effort, rewards included Dr Pepper, mini shake, sharable fries, and a free burger.

As Tom said: “The better the reward, the higher the redemption. The top rewards really motivated people to keep playing.”

Lower-tier rewards reduced friction for first-time players, while higher-value food rewards created a clear incentive to replay and improve.

Importantly, rewards were delivered with a short delay which encouraged future restaurant visits, rather than immediate redemption in the same session.

Promotion that met customers where they already were

Rather than launching Birthday Hop as a standalone activation, Hopdoddy positioned the game as the tentpole of its entire anniversary campaign, running within a limited time window to create urgency.

Crucially, the game was only accessible through the Hopdoddy app. To play, customers either needed to already have the app or download it first, ensuring that every play directly contributed to app acquisition, engagement, and stickiness.

Traffic was driven through a mix of:

In-restaurant table QR codes (capturing high-intent moments while guests waited for food)
Email and push notifications
In-app messaging
Paid ads targeting inactive and non-app users

In-restaurant promotion proved particularly effective. With QR codes on every table, guests had a natural opportunity to play multiple runs during a single visit.

Crucially, Peek & Poke provided all required creative and promotional assets early, allowing Hopdoddy’s team to execute across channels without last-minute scrambles.

“Merging digital with point-of-purchase worked really well. People were already sitting there, ready to engage.”

Engagement, efficiency, and stickiness

For Hopdoddy, success wasn’t measured by plays alone. The team focused on metrics that indicated real commercial value and operational confidence.

The campaign delivered:

325k gameplays from 13k players, 3 times more players than the previous game campaign
4–5 times uplift in app downloads versus the usual run rate
~$4–$5 cost per app download, a huge reduction compared to $15-20 from other campaigns
High replay rates, with some users playing hundreds of times
Clear visibility of reward unlocks, redemptions, and downstream visits via Thanx

One of the most striking signals was time spent: “What surprised me most was how often people played. Hundreds of runs. That tells you it’s fun, and that they’re spending serious time with the brand.”

For a senior marketing team, this mattered because it demonstrated stickiness, something difficult to buy through traditional media alone.

Operational confidence

Beyond performance, execution played a major role in how the campaign was evaluated internally.

The game was built and launched quickly, with technical components that would normally take months completed in days. Peek & Poke coordinated directly with Thanx, removing the need for Hopdoddy to manage vendor dependencies.

Tom commented: “Having a vendor who can reach out to another vendor without having to have their hand held is, in this day and age, incredible.”

Peek & Poke were seen not just as a supplier, but as a partner who understood the commercial realities behind loyalty and app-driven campaigns, and designed accordingly.

“Peek & Poke felt more like a strategic partner than a supplier. They understood that engagement alone isn’t success, it has to translate into real behaviour and revenue, and built a solution that reflected that.”

Tom Lockwood, Director of Marketing, Hopdoddy

Why Hopdoddy keeps coming back

For Hopdoddy, the value of Birthday Hop went beyond the game itself. What stood out was the combination of strong performance, operational confidence, and a delivery approach that removed friction rather than adding it.

Speed of execution, reliability, and hands-on support, particularly across platform integrations, played a key role in building that trust. Even when coordinating across time zones and third-party platforms, delivery felt controlled and predictable.

Over time, this consistency shifted how games were viewed internally at Hopdoddy. What started as a campaign experiment evolved into a repeatable, strategic capability. Rather than relying solely on paid media or blanket giveaways, games proved to be a more efficient way to drive loyalty, engagement, and repeat behaviour, without sacrificing control.

By combining nostalgia, playability, and controlled rewards, Birthday Hop turned a brand celebration into a dependable loyalty lever.

Tom commented: “We could spend more money on ads or give away free food and be less efficient. What we’ve aligned on is that gamification, with a strong fun factor, is something we want to keep as part of our overall strategy, specifically as a lever for loyalty.”

“Peek & Poke consistently deliver games that are easy to play, engaging, and reliable. Beyond the product itself, the speed of execution and hands-on support made a real difference, especially when integrating with other platforms.”

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