Denny's Surreal Voice

2013

Date: October 2013 · Place: Twitter and Tumblr; Spartanburg, South Carolina · Figures: Denny's, restaurant chain · Erwin Penland, agency · Gawker Media, early amplifier · Tags: Brand, Tumblr, Surreal 01. Pancake Posters In October 2013 the Denny's Tumblr account posts a low-resolution photo of a stack of pancakes with the caption zoom in on the syrup. Then a closer crop. Then closer. The bit runs nine posts deep. The account is run by the agency Erwin Penland out of Spartanburg, South Carolina, the city Denny's calls home. The voice borrows directly from Weird Twitter and shitposting Tumblr. It posts about being trapped inside a pancake, about the suspicious behaviour of a single hash brown, about the soul of breakfast. It never sells anything. 02. Brand Voice Year Zero Within twelve months every brand on Twitter is trying to sound like Denny's. MoonPie, Steak-umm, Sunny D, Arby's, Wendy's all hire copywriters fluent in shitpost. The diner chain that nobody under thirty went to becomes the template for talking to people under thirty. The lesson the marketing industry absorbs is that the voice of a chain restaurant can be indistinguishable from a depressed twenty-three-year-old, and that this is good for business. Sources • Tim Nudd, 'How Denny's Became the King of Twitter and Tumblr', Adweek, 25 March 2014 • Digiday, 'Inside Denny's social strategy', 11 June 2015 • Denny's Tumblr archive, October 2013 onward