Dairy Queen Canada drove 65M+ views by meeting Canadians in entertainment moments

Goals

Dairy Queen (DQ) has been part of the Canadian summer for 85 years. The after-game Blizzard, the family road trip stop, the first soft serve when the weather finally turns. Eighty-five years of that is worth protecting. In 2025, DQ went all in to make sure their brand stayed as relevant as the ritual.

That year, DQ turned 85, launched a new Blizzard flavor, and headed into summer with a high-profile limited-time offer (LTO) campaign. For Candida Ness, Vice President of Marketing at Dairy Queen Canada, one question cut through it all: "How do we stay modern?"

The answer wasn't found in demographics or broad assumptions about who DQ's audience was. It was found in something simpler: showing up inside the entertainment experiences Canadians were already choosing. From the games they streamed to the shows they binged and the films they lined up to see, DQ saw an opportunity to connect with Canadians across generations by meeting them in the moments they cared about most.

This thinking aligns with a broader shift in how consumers connect with brands. The recent Beyond the Generational Divide research from Amazon Ads found that three in five surveyed consumers prefer brands that speak to their values and interests rather than their age or demographic profile.¹ For DQ, that insight pointed in one direction: make the brand part of the story Canadians were already watching.

Approach

To bring that strategy to life, DQ partnered with Amazon Ads and agency partner DentsuX to activate three distinct campaigns throughout 2025, each anchored in a different entertainment moment and a different Amazon Ads solution.

Why Dairy Queen bet on entertainment to win over Canadian audiences

The first campaign celebrated DQ's 85th birthday on 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. Creator-led livestreams brought the birthday celebration to life in a way that felt native to the channel rather than interruptive. "By using Twitch influencers, that really helped connect our users with the brand, it made it feel authentic," says Ness. As a result, Canadians didn't just see the DQ brand, they experienced it alongside creators they already trusted.

The second campaign leaned into the cultural pull of The Summer I Turned Pretty on Prime Video to amplify DQ's summer Blizzard LTO. The show's emotional storytelling and devoted Canadian fanbase made it a natural fit for a brand synonymous with summer feeling. "It definitely had a high degree of emotional engagement, which we leaned on in order to have people resonate with our summer Blizzard menu," says Ness. "It enabled us to be part of that conversation."

The third campaign centred on Superman, using the film's IMDb page alongside other ad formats to promote DQ's new Blizzard flavor. The film's cultural momentum and DQ's new Blizzard flavor were a perfect pairing, giving fans a reason to engage with the brand at peak excitement.

Across all three campaigns, the approach was consistent: find the entertainment moments Canadians were already invested in, and show up there with purpose.

Results

Across Twitch, Prime Video, and IMDb, DQ drove 65M+ total views, a 95% average video completion rate, and 110,635 minutes watched on Twitch alone.²

The numbers told one part of the story. The other part was in the impact on sales. Ness attributed positive sales growth directly to the campaign activities, a meaningful outcome for a brand that set out to prove relevance, not just reach.

"If we look at overall media performance, benchmarks were exceeded absolutely everywhere," says Smith. "It really showed us that driving relevance leads to engagement, which leads to an amazing experience to change brand perceptions and overall meaningful impact."

For DQ, the results confirmed what the strategy had always assumed: Canadians don't need to be chased. They just need to be met where they are already paying attention, and increasingly, that is within entertainment.

Sources

¹ Amazon Ads custom research with Strat7 Crowd.DNA. Beyond the Generational Divide: The new rules for consumer connection. Fielded December 2024 to January 2025. Data reflects AU, BR, CA, DE, ES, FR, IT, JP, MX, U.K., and U.S. aggregated. Base: All respondents (26,400), Gen Z (6,680), Millennials (6,680), Gen X (6,668), Baby Boomers (6,372)

² Amazon internal, CA, 2025