All About That Arby’s

Today in class we had a virtual visit from Josh Martin the Director of Social Media for Arby’s.

So like how cool is technology that we can still have a guest speaker even though they can’t actually come to class.

Josh has been at Arby’s for going on 8 years now and he says that he was just thrown into in by chance. Josh’s background is actually in psychology but he has been doing social media at Arby’s all this time. He originally had a team of 1 (himself) but now has a team of 3 and a few interns each year.

One of the student’s in class asked about crisis communication and how they try to keep ahead of the times. Josh told us that only 3 people have the log ins for each account and they change their passcodes every month. with managing their social media in house, they do what they can to not get hacked. When it comes to bad food reviews or someone getting sick, they get wind of those and reach out right away to try to resolve the problems.

When it comes to brand influencers, Arby’s doesn’t often use them because they are big on authenticity. They feel that paying for someone to come and give a good review of their food is not authentic. So they would rather feature true in the moment reviews of their food rather than someone that might have a lot of followers.

Witty. Bold. Confident. Genuine. Theses are the personality traits that they try to portray on their TV advertisements as well as their social media. He says “There really is no right or wrong way for brands to do social, there’s no blue print.” What works for Arby’s isn’t necessarily going to work for someone else.

It was great having the chance to learn a little more from someone that does so well in this industry. Now… time to go find some Arby’s. It’s almost lunch time.