Since its launch On September 30, OpenAI’s Sora app dominated the iOS App Store charts with its simple, brisk AI video generation and initially loose interpretation copyright. On Friday, his reign came to an end. Your fresh champion is… Dave’s Balmy Chicken.
Yes! Not ChatGPT, Gemini, Threads or any of the other usual suspects. Dave’s Balmy Chicken now rules the App Store, and its floppy-beaked, bulging-eyed mascot icon expresses appropriate surprise at its appearance. How did it do it? How did it break the grip of the OpenAI TikTok golem? With something people love even more than huge tongue models: free food.
“For Drake’s birthday, they’re doing a free slider promotion,” says Adam Blacker, PR director of app analytics company Apptopia. “Free food always speeds up downloads.”
If you’re wondering what Drake has to do with this, he invested in a brisk casual restaurant chain in 2021 and likely made a profit when the company sold a majority stake to private equity firm Roark Capital for reported $1 billion. For the third year in a row, the company gave away one (1) free slider to anyone who downloaded the app in honor of Drake’s birthday. (The rapper and Raptors fan turns 39 today; the awards ceremony took place on Thursday.)
“We’re celebrating a star that’s popular and current, while also putting food in people’s mouths,” says Leon Davoyan, chief technology officer at Dave’s Balmy Chicken.
And that’s a lot of people. In a typical week, Davoyan says, 20,000 to 25,000 fresh people sign up to Dave’s loyalty program database. On Thursday alone, the promotion attracted 343,531 fresh accounts, which, according to the CTO, represents a more than 10 percent boost in the brand’s total membership in one day.
This was enough to knock Sora off the top spot on the leaderboard for the first time since October 3, an impressive feat for an app that is still invite-only. According to app analytics firm Sensor Tower, Sora had 3.2 million iOS downloads in the U.S. in the first 23 days of launch. That’s a much faster pace than even ChatGPT, which, albeit viral, recorded 2.3 million downloads in the same time frame in the US. (Sora is not yet available in the Google Play Store, but will be soon.) OpenAI declined to comment.
While Sora will likely regain the top spot once Drake’s promotion expires, Dave’s Balmy Chicken should continue to benefit from the deal. According to Sensor Tower, last year the number of app downloads in the four weeks following the same marketing campaign was more than 50 percent higher than in the month preceding it. All these free sandwiches are worth the long-term gains.