Don’t Be Like Wendy’s: The Importance of a Brand Promise

The rise of social media in the last decade has opened the doors to fresh marketing possibilities that have had amazing effects for businesses. But with immense success has also come a dangerous consequence for brands shifting their focus into the digital world.

Social media, and the Internet as a whole, have allowed people to create “online personas” lacking of restraint for what people say or do. If you visit any comment section today on a news article or brand/celebrity post, you’re bound to find a handful of people or anonymous handles spewing terrible things that, if they were in public and face-to-face, they may think twice about vocalizing. The term often attributed to people who simply say hateful things—sometimes racist, sexist, or bigoted—for shock value is “troll,” but recently, the lines between what is a troll and someone’s true beliefs has unfortunately been blurred.

Brands are now using different, online personas as well—you can call these “social brand personas”—and have fallen victim to the same dangers. Marketing requires brands to create personas that take on key traits of their target demographics, right? This no longer should be the case because the people who shop in stores have different personas than the ones engaging with a brand online. And to take on the traits of your online target demographics means you too need to become snarky, negative, sarcastic, and rude. Not doing so may cause a brand to lose followers to their competitors who chose to lean into the negativity. An unfortunate side-effect of this new online persona is brands losing their identity and, even more important, equity.

The clearest—possibly the most popular, too—example of a brand that has completely rejected their former brand equity in favor of a snarky, troll-like persona is Wendy’s. Wendy’s has received both praise and criticism for its decision to go all-in on the snark and insults, but I’m here to say that what they’re doing is not sustainable as a brand model. The Internet continues to become increasingly negative and hostile toward others, which is a direct result in limited face-to-face communication. People don't feel responsible for their words anymore, and with Wendy’s taking on this persona, they’re enabling this kind of behavior. I’ll admit when Wendy’s made a troll quit Twitter, I found it intriguing, but the novelty of the behavior wore off quickly—as both a consumer and a marketing professional—because I don’t need a brand insulting me or anyone else. Brands should rise above the rest and put the customer first. Creating a customer experience where people only like you for being negative further creates a target demographic of mentally unstable and unhealthy people.

Today’s zeitgeist is one of negativity, fear, and, if we don’t do anything about it, hate. Defenders of Wendy’s will say the brand has gained visibility and loyalty through organic means (not requiring paid ads or other costs outside of staff or agency costs) because tweeting a simple insult is easy. I argue that it’s low-hanging fruit, but I guess that’s their social strategy now.

I remember the “Where’s the Beef” commercial or the positive messaging and branding created by Wendy’s Founder, Dave Thomas. However, today’s Wendy’s would most likely make fun of someone like Dave Thomas or insult Dave’s daughter, Wendy, for her looks (unfortunately, CBS questioned just that when Wendy’s released new commercials with Wendy). And today’s Wendy’s doesn’t even reflect the brand I knew growing up simply to remain relevant on the Internet. I have worked on many brands throughout my career, and I have had the opportunity to go in similar directions—I’m embarrassed to say that I even considered it a few times—but I stayed the course, remembered the true brand persona and message, and provided consumers with the experience they came to expect from a particular brand.

The online persona—and today’s zeitgeist—are unfortunate products of the Internet and social media. And the brands, like Wendy’s, that change their brand personas and strategies to engage this type of negative behavior are only setting themselves up for failure down the road. It’s not enough to get higher engagements because you too are trolling people on the Internet. What are you left with? You’re left with a target demographic of hateful and rude people that expect you to up your insults to stay relevant before they abandon you for the next shock-brand. It’s tiresome, and eventually, when you lose your base, you’ll be left with no one to whom you can market because you alienated the people who previously liked you but got annoyed by your gimmick.

So, this is a warning to the brands that feel they need to have a social brand voice/persona and a different persona for their other content and marketing plans: you will lose, and this practice will eventually catch up to you.