Wendy's Twitter Roasts the Internet

JAN 02 2017 · 12:00

Boom, roasted. Wendy's official sticker from the Twitter era that turned the brand account into a roast-with-GIFs template for corporate social media in 2017. Place: Wendy's corporate Twitter account, headquartered in Dublin, Ohio Figures: Amy Brown, social-media manager 2012-2017 · Carter Wilkerson, the teenager who asked for free nuggets (and got 3.4M retweets) · the rotating cast of agencies that maintained the voice On 2 January 2017, Wendy's Twitter account responds to a customer asking how long beef stays fresh with: where do you live so we can recommend a Wendy's not run by you. The exchange goes viral. Over the following months, the account systematically deploys reaction GIFs against rivals (McDonald's primarily), customers who try to dunk on it, and any account that mentions frozen beef. The account's follower count quadruples. Three months later, Carter Wilkerson asks Wendy's how many retweets for a year of free nuggets; the answer is 18 million; he gets 3.4 million, the most-retweeted tweet in Twitter history at the time, and Wendy's gives him the nuggets anyway. The reaction GIF is the primary visual currency throughout.