MoonPie Twitter

2017

Date: 20 February 2017 · Place: Twitter; Chattanooga Bakery, Tennessee · Figures: Tom Tumbusch, MoonPie president · Jess Cervellon, social lead at the agency · IHOP, the rival in the IHOPancakes exchange · Tags: Brand, Twitter, Snack 01. Pancake Trash Talk On 20 February 2017 IHOP tweets pancakes or french toast? MoonPie's account quote-tweets or a moonpie. The exchange screencaps across Twitter the same evening. The MoonPie account has been quietly running a Denny's-style surreal voice for months; the IHOP reply is the breakout. The 117-year-old Chattanooga Bakery has roughly twenty employees. Its Twitter is operated by a small agency. The account ends 2017 with 240,000 followers, up from 18,000 at the start of the year. 02. The Solar Eclipse Bit On 21 August 2017 the total solar eclipse crosses the United States. MoonPie tweets a black circle with the caption the official snack of the eclipse. NASA quote-tweets it. The bit is so good it ends up on the front of Buzzfeed twice. MoonPie sales rise an estimated 17 per cent year-on-year through 2017. The Tom Tumbusch interview cycle that follows makes clear the brand had no Plan B; it just kept posting until it worked. This is the canonical case for permission to be weird. Sources • @MoonPie original IHOP quote-tweet, 20 February 2017 • Tim Nudd, 'How MoonPie Became the Strangest, Most Wonderful Voice on Twitter', Adweek, 28 March 2017 • Tom Tumbusch interview, Marketing Brew, 11 January 2018