How Arby’s Turned This Social Media Win Into a Brand Development Opportunity
Corporate social media campaigns and accounts have significant influence on their brand’s fans and users/consumers. From Twitter accounts to Tumblr blogs, and even Vine accounts (before it was shut down), provide brands and companies with enormous opportunities and audience reach. Many big businesses have had great social media wins over recent years. Arby’s had a particularly memorable instance in 2014 that had very positive outcomes for the company.
Arby’s recognized a social media opportunity in 2014, when artist Pharrell Williams wore a hat on the red carpet to that year’s Grammy’s. The hat bore quite a resemblance to Arby’s hat logo. Arby had tweeted out:
Pharrell’s hat ended up going up for auction. It was purchased for $44, 100. Pharrell, seemingly unaware that it was Arby’s who made the purchase, thanked “whoever” bought his hat on Twitter.
In terms of the marketing approach, canned content contributed very little to this moment, whereas planned content was what enabled Arby’s to effectively turn this into a brand development opportunity. Because Arby’s reacted to this unforeseen moment (Pharrell wearing a hat that looks like the Arby’s hat to the Grammy’s) in real time, the content was more unique and tailored to this specific event. Canned content would not have been suitable here, as the situation was quite specific. It offered an immense opportunity for Arby’s which was only successful because Arby’s had a personalized “response” to Pharrell wearing the hat and later, putting it up for auction.
Not only did this social media “interaction” create good publicity for Arby’s, it also allowed Arby’s to make a charitable contribution in relation to the Arby’s brand and Pharrell’s brand as well. This scenario would not have been possible with the canned content approach because having blanket, filler, and/or generic responses would not really be possible for these kinds of situations. Even if those types of responses could somehow be used in this context, it would not illicit the same reaction (number of retweets and likes) or produce the same outcome of building the brand’s identity.
In addition, canned content had little part in this “exchange” or story, because it would be too impersonal and generic. Pharrell’s hat in this scenario is Arby’s hat, and a large part of the company’s brand identity. Planned content was critical because Arby’s had just leveraged the tools available at their disposal at that time (Pharrell press from the Grammy’s, the Arby’s logo). The result was tweets that were highly personalized to the situation. It also showed how Arby’s was able to build more brand value through making a huge charitable donation for no other reason than to “get their hat back” even though it was not originally their hat to begin with.
