wendy's
baconator twitter
backstory
Back in the early, serif days Twitter, the Wendy's account was little more than customer support, helicopter clients, and a co-worker who wanted to blow his brains out. I'd toss him a few fun posts that performed well and soon the agency would put me in charge of a new test account for their bacon cheeseburger, The Baconator. (I didn't want this.)
But then something interesting happened... Rather than tweet the same generic crap about "national taco day" or trending hashtags, I did something different. I sassed back. I talked to everyone. And my phone was always on me so I literally NEVER
stopped engaging.
In just 3 weeks, I was already reaching over a million people — virally. And in 2 short months, had already outpaced the Wendy's parent account: second only to Starbucks on social. In fact, through retweets, shout-outs, and word of mouth, I had created an online persona organically
outperforming its own paid media. Here's that story...
Daily scheduled posts got the crowd warmed up...
But where Baconator really took off was one-on-one.
And I talked to 👏 every 👏 single 👏 person.
Baconator even spoke multiple languages.
Rather than block or ignore trolls, Baconator used humor to convert
problem people into even more retweets and followers.
(Plenty worse than this, trust me.)
And Baconator never flinched, blushed, or lost his cool.
That included putting my foot down and barring the client from logging in
like they did on @wendys.
The results in the Twitterverse?
And in the Marketingverse?
Seriously. Some dude actually took the time to write this to Wendy's HQ.
And here's how all of that translated to the real world.
#WendysEmployeesTweets
Flash forward a few years. Wendy's would attempt to update their image. The account would go to a different agency. And the juggernaut that was @iamBaconator would get folded into the original Wendy's handle — but a few old Twitter fans would remember the good old days and how all of this came to be.
Yes, people tracked me down as a real person.
No, I am not nearly as popular as a non-sandwich.
