Did you see guys see the savage clapback Wendy’s did on Twitter? I’m so following them.
Jimmy’s Seafood totally triggered those vegans on Twitter. Iconic.
Burger King is so relatable on Twitter. I’m dead inside as well. Big mood.
Within the last two years or so, we’ve seen an increasing trend towards a very interesting
phenomenon. Namely, corporate Twitter accounts have begun to base their online presence less
on professional promotions and more on being ‘relatable’ over social media.
We see accounts like Wendy’s posting memes and “sassy clapbacks”, Arby’s posting
references to our favourite fandoms, from Dangan Ronpa to Games of Thrones to The Adventure
Zone, and Burger King posting “relatable” memes about existential dread or using stan
twitter jargon. These accounts have become so popular that the Wendy’s social media
team actually did a Q & A on Reddit, with over 42 thousand upvotes and multiple instances
of being gifted Reddit gold, which gives you access to special features and costs real
money. People were literally just giving their money to a megacorporation on Reddit for nothing
in return, because they loved Wendys’ brand image that much.
Given that this has been a growing trend for the past couple of years, there have accordingly
been people criticizing this trend the whole time. With that said, popular criticism of
this sort of corporate social media presence has only really recently started to take hold.
We’ve seen tons of articles, both from clickbait sites and legitimate news sources, essentially
praising the companies for their clever savagery. These articles mostly date from mid-2017 to
early 2018, while more recent articles are increasingly critical of these companies’
social media presence. Even still, the praise greatly outweighs the criticism, and every
time one of these companies posts a ‘savage’ tweet, Buzzfeed clones jump on it as if it’s
the year’s hottest mixtape.
So… why is that? How did this trend of fast food companies getting into Twitter brawls
with each other become so widespread? Why has mainstream criticism of it only sprung
up very recently? And, finally, is this cause for concern, and why?
Well… let’s see.
The trend of fast food companies specifically roasting one another is pretty recent, but
the factors that set the stage for it are a few years older. One of the first big brands
to successfully harness social media to become somewhat of an icon wasn’t actually on Twitter
at all. More specifically, Denny’s presence on Tumblr was one of the first times a fast
food company’s social media activity really blew up and became sort of a ubiquitous presence on a social media
site. The blog was created in early 2013, and they quickly began posting surrealist
memes, in a similar style to a lot of the users at the time.
Here are some examples… things like deliberate misspellings of words to maintain a ‘casual’
tone, existentialist memes, and directly engaging with other users were all things that were
very popular with the average Tumblr user at the time. They even posted references to
popular events. A lot of people remember the iconic failure of Dashcon; essentially, a
few people tried to run a ‘Tumblr-themed convention’ and it was a poorly managed
mess. Possibly the most famous picture of the convention was an empty room with a single
“ball pit”, which was just a shallow blow-up kiddy pool with plastic balls in it. Denny’s
made several posts referencing the meme, calling it “dencon”.
These kinds of posts were initially met with a sort of bemused appreciation; replies like
“what the fuck dennys” or “dennys are you ok” were some common responses to these
memes. But, after a while, the company’s presence on Tumblr sort of just… became
accepted. Dennys was kind of just everyone’s weird but funny cousin who occasionally shows up at family
gatherings. You’re not really sure why they’re there, but you’re not complaining, either.
Comments on memes posted by the account became less confused and more just… huh. They’re
pretty good at this.
Eventually, this phenomenon started to spread to other social media sites. Starting in 2015,
Burger King, which at the time mostly posted generic social media promotions like “Hey
guys, Whoppers are 15% off!” started to dabble in other content.
This really kicked off when a tweet from 2015, which referenced the ‘what
are those’ meme, blew up and got 32 thousand retweets. Compare that to this tweet from 2013, which
is pretty much your average, run-of-the-mill advertising statement. Nowadays,
their social media feed is pretty much all memes and pop culture references, and they’ve
gained around a million and a half followers since 2013.
After Burger King’s foray into the meme world, other companies started to follow,
and most eventually settled into a comfortable niche. Arbys’ twitter is primarily centred around
various pop culture references; for instance, they make fictional characters out of sandwich
ingredients and recreate video game screens. Domino’s and Pizza Hut capitalize on their
rivalry with one another. Wendy’s twitter is mostly based around being sassy and “roasting”
their followers and other companies. For pretty much all of them, this strategy has been really
effective. Since 2013, Arbys went from 98 thousand followers to over 800 thousand, Domino’s
went from 160 thousand followers to 1.2 million, and Wendys went from around 161 thousand followers
to almost two and a half million.
But, all things must come to an end, and, in the case of fast food companies on social
media, Dennys was the first to fall. Eventually, people started to become tired of Dennys capitalizing
on every new meme, and people started to turn on them. This was in part because they found
these attempts to be cringy, and in part because of a growing news story about Dennys facing
several racial discrimination lawsuits. In fact, in 2017, Tumblr users deliberately created
a new meme dedicated to making fun of Dennys, for the sole purpose of making it un-parody-able
by the company.
Essentially, it was just the phrase “John C. Miller, President and CEO of the Denny’s
Corporation, is a capitalist running dog and his wealth must be seized and redistributed
to the people” pasted onto various stock images and superimposed over other memes.
According to the meme’s creator, it was a lose-lose situation for Dennys, either they
had to silently watch people dunk on them on a site where they used to be loved, or
if Dennys actually parodied the meme, the megacorporation would have gotten baited into
distributing anti-capitalist propaganda. Denny's eventually did end up making a “parody”
of the meme… which just made people
like them less.
But this only happened around a year ago, and Dennys enjoyed years of praise and free
publicity before this happened. There also hasn’t been any major backlash towards Wendys
or any other big fast food chain based on their social media presence. Besides a couple
instances of companies tweeting and deleting tone-deaf content, they’re still quite popular.
This might initially seem a bit confusing, especially because pretty much everyone claims
to hate ads. I have never met a person whose favourite part of watching TV is looking at
the commercials. So why have these companies managed to do this for so long without experiencing
mas criticism or unpopularity?
So, in order to understand what makes this form of advertising so effective, it’s important
to look at what they are actually trying to imprint into your mind. The goal of advertising
nowadays isn’t necessarily as simple as it used to be. When you watch vintage commercials,
the message is generally pretty straightforward. It shows you a product, it tells you why the product is
good, and then finally, it tells you to use it. Take a look at this shampoo commercial from the 1950s.
When your hair looks radiantly alive, then you feel radiantly alive.
Thanks to Prell, liquid Prell, the extra rich shampoo.
The formula here is pretty straightforward.
It shows you pretty hair, it tells you that that Prell is better than other shampoos,
and, finally, it tells you to use it.There’s even a little jingle at the end to make it stick in your mind.
And, certainly, these kinds of advertisements still exist. But a very common, and arguably
more effective form of advertising nowadays, runs much deeper than that. And that is creating
a strong Brand Image. It’s not only about being immediately recognizable to a consumer
base, but also having that consumer base associate clear, positive traits with your company,
like “cool” or “reliable”. Think about the kind of commercials that play during,
say, the Superbowl. The main goal isn’t that you come out of those commercials
thinking that the product is amazing and you want to buy it. You want the ads themselves
to be memorable, go viral, even, and you want to make sure that they remain associated with
the company in the process. Think of the famous Old Spice commercials starring Terry
Crews. People don’t like the commercials because they love shaving cream. People like
the commercials because the commercials are entertaining.
In effect, you want content that's enjoyable enough on its own that people share the advertisements
with each other of their own volition. Effective ads these days are not boring videos that
you zone out watching. It’s content that makes you want more.
And with the advent of millennials and Generation Z kids who grew up on social media; grew up with memes
and internet culture as a part of their lives, starting to get jobs in marketing, companies
are starting to get very, very good at this. As this applies to these corporations on Twitter,
their job is to stand out. And it works; as these accounts get more and more popular,
people begin to assign personalities to these corporations and even begin to view them as friends.
Arby's is that cool nerdy kid who loves all the same stuff you do. Burger King is your
friend you make existential dread jokes with. With Wendy’s, we even saw the popularity
of a meme that personified the chain’s mascot as a “sassy, smug anime girl”. In fact,
anime Wendy is so popular that when you search ‘Wendy's’ on Google Images, one of the
first results is the mascot reimagined as an anime girl. So, rather than the intention
being “make you want a Wendys burger right now”, it’s to make sure that when you
do want a burger, the very first thing that comes to mind is your cool, sassy friend Wendy-
who, by the way, never uses frozen meat in her delicious Baconators!
And, certainly, a lot of these images were probably made sarcastically. You know, it’s
funny and ironic, that ubiquitous mascot you see on your drive out of town is 4chan’s
waifu now! Regardless, however, the actual impact still ends up being the same. Wendy's-
a megacorporation with thousands of employees and a CEO who makes millions of dollars a
year, is viewed not as a massive, powerful entity, but as a singular fun, relatable individual.
She’s ever present on social media, she’s sassy sometimes, she loves memes- she’s
you. Another effect of this is that when a company posts a cool, ironic meme
in the same format as other internet users, it doesn’t necessarily automatically read
as an advertisement. Often, the only thing that delineates it as an ad as the brand name
attached to it. And as long as that brand name sticks in our minds when we think of
that ad, the positive association with the company stays there as well, but in a much more
subtle way than what we’re used to.
Not only that, but the massive popularity of Wendy's, and the amount of people who view
the company as a friend, has convinced people that making fun of these companies is “uncool”
and that supporting them is “cool.” Regularly, when people attempt to criticize Wendy’s
over Twitter and Wendy’s responds with a short zinger… the internet’s on Wendy’s
side. Just take a look at some of the replies to an exchange where a user criticized Wendy's
and got roasted.
Eating at Wendy’s tomorrow. Game respects game.
Thank you for the clear reminder why everybody loves sassy redheads. See you for lunch tomorrow,
m'lady. He didn't say m'lady, but he said it spiritually. We all know this.
They’re fucking his life up.
People need to stop thinking they can go toe to toe with Wendy’s in a twitter battle.
The point is… the “trendy” thing to do here, the thing that indicates that you appreciate
the latest memes… is to support Wendy’s, whereas making fun of Wendy’s is “uncool”.
People who do that are out of the loop; they don’t get it. People are out here literally
begging to be insulted by Wendy’s. And they don’t even get called cucks for it, which
is how you know something is really epic. And yeah, maybe trying to get into a Twitter
fight with a fast food company is pretty lame… but this also means that all criticisms of
companies like Wendy's are deemed to be “uncool” and not worth listening to. Even communities
that used to be actively dedicated to making fun of this kind of content began to grow
to praise it. Take a look at the subreddit r/FellowKids, which has around 300,000 subscribers.
The subreddit was founded in 2014, and used to be dedicated solely to making fun of companies
that tried too hard to be relatable with their advertising content. But as companies
started to get good at using Twitter, the subreddit’s focus began to trend more
towards allowing and posting ‘self-aware’ content, with most of the comments actually
praising the companies, rather than laughing at them.
This makes it harder to criticize these advertising practices… and even to identify them.
I mean, we all know consciously that the funny tweet that whatever company put out is an ad, but
when you point this out, you're seen as the wet blanket ruining the fun. And while this
isn’t the kind of stuff that gets brought up in fights over the shape of your burgers…
there are some serious problems to talk about.
Generally speaking, I think it’s fair to say that any cultural shift which makes it harder for
people to criticize the actions of big companies is probably not great. But why does the personification
of these companies as cool people in your life specifically suck?
Well, for one thing, we already know that this kind of advertising allows consumers to create
distinct personalities for these companies. And we know that this means they’re viewed less as massive,
powerful entities composed of thousands of people, and more as one sole, sentient individual.
And, of course, on a rational level, everybody knows that this isn’t true. Nobody is going
to see a picture of smug anime Wendy and think “wow, this is a real person”. But on a subconscious
level, this might trick you into thinking that these companies are your friends. It’s
not ‘a bunch of underpaid interns are funny on social media’, it’s ‘the entire company is
funny on social media’. The worst part is, the more immune you think you are to this
kind of advertising, the more susceptible you become as a result. This is a well-observed
phenomenon called the Third-Person effect. Essentially, thinking you’re immune to subconscious
advertisement and brainwashing causes you to let your guard down, making you even more
susceptible to it. People think “well, I’m smart! I wouldn’t fall for that”! But
the truth is, being manipulated, whether it be by cults, politicians, or advertisements,
has nothing to do with how intelligent you are. The reason they use these manipulative tactics
is because they’re effective. Which means that often, even if people consciously
know something, what’s more important when evaluating their worldview is how it makes
them feel.
For instance, if you asked most people if they cared in principle if their food was
made ethically, they’d probably say yes. And if you asked those same people if they thought
their quirky friend Wendy's made their food ethically, they’d probably be like ‘nah,
probably not’. And they’d be right; that fun relatable anime girl sources her vegetables
from farms in Mexico that effectively use slave labour. Responding to people on Twitter
who accuse you of using frozen beef is pretty low-hanging fruit, but I doubt there are going
to be any fun zingers about workers being slapped for asking for more food, or tied
to a tree and beaten for trying to leave the farm. This doesn’t fit into the fun, quirky
narrative about a cute anime girl giving you a burger while roasting haters.
And even though a lot of people probably do consciously know these things, the way this advertising
works is that most people don’t really care. Worse, when you think of a megacorporation
as a person, that includes imagining them with thoughts, feelings, and desires. So not
only are people who criticize these companies’ unethical practices being lame and unfun and
uncool, they’re also hurting this delicate waifu’s feelings. No, seriously. Multiple
average people on Twitter and actual news sources have referred to people criticizing
the company on social media as “bullying”.
And this is what happens when you personify a company. It’s a lot harder to say “Wendy’s
is the worst” when instead of talking about CEOs in ginormous mansions, you’re talking
about the fun friend that tweets at you. Not only that, but… this new form of advertising
largely takes place over social media, where people regularly go to unwind. And this represents
a cultural shift of subtle advertising being increasingly pervasive in people’s day-to-day
lives. In the past, when you sat down and watched TV, there would be a clear
delineation between “entertainment” and “advertising”.
You watch the show to enjoy yourself, and every fifteen minutes or so, you get some
commercials, which explicitly tell you that they are commercials. There’s no subtle,
subconscious ingraining going on there. As product placement started to become more and
more common, this line started to blur a little bit. More and more, ads started not to look
like ads. And with this new level of social media usage, where ads are often functionally indistinguishable
from fun content you would share with your friends otherwise, this is kind of terrifying.
The subtlety of it all means that often, people don’t even realize how frequently they’re
thinking of these companies, and thinking of them in a positive way. More and more,
this is starting to mean that a) ads are everywhere in your life, and b) you barely even register
them as ads.
For us, that means we are becoming less and less able to get away from advertising, and
less able to even notice it, which means that when we go to Wendy’s
or Denny's or Arby's and go get a hamburger, this choice becomes less and less of a free,
conscious one. And if this is the direction that ads are going to take
from here on out, imagine how that’s going to affect people who never grew up knowing
anything else. I’m in an awkward spot generationally, where if you asked some people, half of them are
gonna say I’m a millennial, and half of them'd say I’m part of Generation
Z. Now, I don’t really care, because generations are made up anyway, but I have started to
notice that people even 5 years younger than me have a different outlook on social media
than I do. Most people I know started to get Facebook when they were 13-ish, whereas kids
nowadays are on apps like Snapchat and Instagram as young as 8 or 9. They literally
don’t know any differently. And yes, of course, parents should take responsibility to make
sure this isn’t happening, but either way, these kids are going to grow up
in a world where this kind of coercive advertising and brand consciousness is ever-present.
And because they never grew up without it, they are going to be even less equipped than
we are to notice and point out these advertising tactics, and that is a serious problem.
Advertising via social media has gotten even more refined, precise, and subtle since the
generation that grew up knowing how to master social media is starting to get jobs in marketing.
This has allowed us to conceptualize massive corporations as sentient individuals, making
it harder to notice and criticize advertising practices in our day-to-day lives. People
have completely fallen in love with individuals that don’t exist, from
spending real money on them for nothing in return to begging the companies to make fun
of them. And as funny as it is to watch a supposedly professional company like McDonalds
suddenly roast the shit out of someone on Twitter, this is starting to have real ramifications.
As this form of advertising starts to increasingly pervade every aspect of our day-to-day lives,
criticizing the actions of these companies becomes even more difficult. And if this sucks
for us already, it’s really going to suck for the people who grew up immersed in it.
I can’t force anyone to unfollow these companies on Twitter and install an ad-blocker, but… if you’re
going to enjoy a delicious never frozen hamburger at cutting-edge prices… please just make sure
you’re conscious of where that choice may have come from.
Or just join the revolution and start smashing shit. Whatever makes you happy.