2025 was a big year for Dairy Queen (DQ); the company turned 85 years old, launched a new Blizzard, and ran a summertime Limited Time Offering (LTO) campaign. As the brand looked to mark these milestones in a way that felt relevant to today's consumers, it needed a strategy rooted in shared cultural moments. To connect with Canadians – from adults who have fond memories of the brand to young people who are starting to create them – DQ leveraged a series of Amazon Ads’ entertainment solutions, such as Twitch, Prime Video and IMDb across three distinct campaigns throughout the year.
For their first campaign celebrating DQ’s 85th birthday, the brand took to Twitch. "It's a platform we know our prime target audience spends a lot of time with," explains Donna Smith, vice president of client leadership at DentsuX. Amazon Ads' recent report,‘Beyond the Generational Divide: the new rules for consumer connection’, highlights the relevance of connecting to people via their shared interests. It finds that three in five surveyed customers like brands that speak to their values and interests. The creator-led livestreams, which celebrated DQ's 85th birthday, saw great results. "Benchmarks were exceeded absolutely everywhere," says Smith.
In their second campaign, the hit show, The Summer I Turned Pretty took a starring role to boost visibility of DQ’s limited time Blizzard offering. Not only does the show align with DQ's values, it's also loved by the Canadian public. One Torontonian Campaign Canada spoke to said: "It's such a good show. I binge-watched it."
The third campaign DQ ran centred on Superman. DQ used the film's IMDb page (among other ad formats) to advertise its new Blizzard flavour.
Reflecting on the partnership, Candida Ness, vice president of marketing at Dairy Queen Canada, says: "When you think about how complex media has gotten now, this could have been a very complex program. Amazon really enabled us to make it simple."
For the full breakdown of Dairy Queen's campaign, and to understand how interest-based strategies deliver impact across the funnel, watch our video.
Missed part one of the ‘Age is Just a Number’ series? Catch up here to see how shared communities, not age, are becoming the strongest connectors between brands and people.
In the final part of this series, we bring these examples together with insights from Amazon Ads’ research to explore what moving beyond the generational divide means for brands across the full funnel.