Sora Has Lost Its App Store Crown to Drake and Free Chicken
Since its launch on September 30, OpenAI’s Sora app has dominated the iOS App Store charts, thanks to its simple, breezy AI video generation and an initially vague interpretation of copyright laws. On Friday, his reign ended. Your new champion is… Dave’s Hot Chicken.
Yes! Not ChatGPT, Gemini, Threads or any of the other usual suspects. Dave’s Hot Chicken now reigns over the App Store, where its loose-beaked, bug-eyed mascot icon expresses appropriate surprise during its ascension. How did he do it? How did he break the grip of OpenAI’s TikTok golem? With something people love even more than great language models: free food.
“They’re running a promotion for free sliders to celebrate Drake’s birthday,” says Adam Blacker, director of public relations at app analytics company Apptopia. “Free food always generates smooth downloads. »
If you’re wondering what Drake has to do with all this, he invested in the fast casual restaurant chain in 2021 and likely made his fortune when the company sold a majority stake to private equity firm Roark Capital for a reported $1 billion. For the third year in a row, the company offered 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 giveaway was Thursday.)
“We’re celebrating a popular, timely celebrity while putting food in people’s mouths,” says Leon Davoyan, chief technology officer of Dave’s Hot Chicken.
And it’s really a lot of people. In a typical week, Davoyan says, Dave’s sees between 20,000 and 25,000 new signups to its loyalty database. On Thursday alone, the promotion generated 343,531 new accounts, an increase of more than 10% in the brand’s total membership in a single day, according to the CTO.
It was enough to knock Sora out of the top spot for the first time since October 3, an impressive haul for an app that’s still invite-only. In the first 23 days after its launch, Sora saw 3.2 million iOS downloads in the United States, according to app analytics firm Sensor Tower. That’s a much faster pace than even ChatGPT, which, while just as viral, saw 2.3 million downloads in the United States in the same time. (Sora isn’t yet available on the Google Play Store, but it’s coming.) OpenAI declined to comment.
While Sora is likely to reclaim the top spot after the Drake promotion ends, Dave’s Hot Chicken should continue to reap the benefits of his giveaway. Last year, according to Sensor Tower, downloads of the app in the four weeks following the same marketing campaign were more than 50% higher than the month before. All those free sandwiches are worth the gains in the long run.
