How a fast-food restaurant and a K-pop star collided for a perfect social media campaign

Sometimes, the universe serves up opportunity on a golden platter.

That’s exactly what happened when J-Hope, member of the mega-successful K-pop group BTS, announced his solo album would be called “Jack in the Box.”

Small Girls PR, which represents the fast-food restaurant of the same name, recognized the opportunity and jumped into action by creating a social media and in-store campaign to take advantage of the serendipity. The efforts earned more than 600,000 social media impressions, hits in Billboard, The LA Times and TODAY.com – all for no budget.

“It seems like it could have been a shoo-in,” said Mallory Blair, CEO of SGPR. “Because there’s a name and likeness that is shared and that is uncanny and that is special and we wanted to celebrate that. But you have to come up with an authentic reason why fans should then do one more click to go to your brand’s site. It’s important to figure out what the authentic string is between the two.”

Identifying the authentic opportunity