Keeping Fortnite Fresh
Wendy’s
Issue 51 | June 2019
Agency
VMLY&R
Creative Team
Global Chief Creative Officer Debbi Vandeven North American Chief Creative Officer John Godsey Executive Creative Directors Derek Clark, Chris Corley Creative Director McKay Hathaway Senior Art Director Conor Clarke Associate Creative Director Eamon Conway Senior Art Director Elias Julian Copywriter Nate Steele Art Director Jourdan Hull
Production Team
Associate Director, Conversation Design Matt Keck Supervisor, Client Engagement Erica Hudson Associate Connections Manager Emmy Hanlon Senior Channel Manager Samantha Schuster Senior Campaign Program Manager Laura Picicci Campaign Program Manager Ashley Thomas
Other Credits
Chief Client Officer North America Jennifer McDonald Group Director, Client Engagement Kelly Gartenmayer Supervisor, Client Engagement Colin Belmont Director, Connections & Social Strategy Charles Gooch Analysts, Strategy & Insights Jeremy Cline, Katie Furman Account Manager Jayne Andrews Assistant Account Manager Margaret Reed Client Senior Director, Media & Partnerships Jimmy Bennett Social Media Strategist Kristin Tormey
Date
November 2018
Background
Younger consumers were revolutionising the ways entertainment was produced and consumed. Through the online streaming platform Twitch, Fortnite had grown from a video game to the cultural hub for 12- to 24-year-olds and a new form of interactive entertainment altogether.
This audience was creating entertainment for and by itself. It was adept at avoiding traditional advertising and was highly sceptical of brands entering its cultural space. This posed a challenge to Wendy's because younger consumers were those who ate most in the quick service restaurant category.
Idea
To reach an audience that didn’t want to be reached, Wendy’s entered the world of Fortnite not as a brand but as a player. When Fortnite announced a new event called Food Fight, Wendy’s noticed that in the battle with Team Pizza, Team Burger stored their beef in freezers. Something Wendy’s has never done, ever.
While other brands had placed billboards and their logos within games, Wendy’s just chose a character and dropped into the game. But instead of killing other players, Wendy’s set about destroying freezers.
Tweets alerted gamers to what was happening so they could go to Twitch and watch the mayhem. For nine hours, Wendy’s destroyed freezers, streaming it live on Twitch to immerse themselves in this audience’s world as both player and brand.Then Twitch streamers began to notice and other players joined in and began destroying burger freezers too.
Results
The time Wendy’s spent destroying in-game freezers amassed more than 1.5 million minutes watched. The Twitch stream was viewed live more than a quarter of a million times. Viewers shared the stream and mentions of Wendy’s increased by 119% across social platforms.
Even Twitch got involved by creating a highlight reel of Wendy’s destroying Fortnite freezers encouraging other gamers to document their own freezer destruction.
Eventually, Fortnite’s developers removed the in-game burger freezers, thus ridding their (virtual) world of frozen beef.
Our Thoughts
Branding is the art of getting people to think of brands in human terms. Basically, it is anthropomorphism for commercial purpose. Yet we seldom see brands genuinely behaving as people would. This is a glorious exception to that rule, a brand entering our world and behaving like us. (Well, not like me, actually, as I’m not a gamer. But you know what I mean!) Since it is so rare to see a brand being anything other than corporate, Wendy’s got this ad-hating target audience to love what they were doing, the brand become an axe-swinging redhead intent on destroying every freezer in the virtual universe. Brilliant.