Arby's Social Media

ROAR Groupe / Moxie work for Arby's Restaurants | 2016-2021

Arby's Twitter post the day the platform went from 140 to 280 characters (November 8, 2017). We wanted to see how many "characters" we'd created could fit in a single image and still be recognizable.

There's a lot I can say after being on this account from September 2016 to February 2021. This account and the team I joined were the reason I chose to leave in-house marketing and go agency-side. What we had was the very definition of "lightning in a bottle." It got me noticed as an artist for my paper crafting and gave me multiple occasions to speak at conventions and events like SXSW, MomoCon and Awesome Games Done Quick. Arby's as a client was amazing to work with, and they constantly asked us for the next , "Holy sh*t, Arby's!" moment.

Above all, I was privileged to work with some of the most talented and creative people in the business. As a team, we met Arby's goal of being one of the most talked-about brands on social; and that started with our "Fellow Fan" approach to content creation. Through the Fellow Fan ongoing campaign, we were written up more than 50 times by various trade publications, blogs and fan sites; and we won or were nominated for a dozen awards. To see more about that, go check out the Awards tab above where I captured as many of the links as I could.

My role on the team shifted over time. I joined as Senior Designer, and did almost entirely content creation in the form of paper crafts built from packaging and sauce art (my Illustration background and history with cake decorating came in very handy there). However, just because I was a "Senior Designer" on paper, my boss never let that title stop me from joining in on the concepting, art direction, photography and presenting of our ideas. Everyone on the team was an equal and all opinions and ideas mattered; and as I rose through the ranks at ROAR Groupe/Moxie, I kept up with that mentality. Creative Residents (how we referred to our interns) had just as much room to speak up in ideation and planning sessions as the CD, and that made for some incredible growth for everyone on the team.

Who are all these crazy-talented people I worked with? This list is everyone who was part of the day-to-day Creative team since I first joined it in 2016; and although some of them have moved on to other projects / other agencies / got smart and left agency life altogether, they all left their marks on the account.

• Jennifer Barclay - ACD/CD until Dec. 2020

• Brandon Kraemer - Sr. Copywriter until Dec. 2018 (left Publicis for Nintendo)

• Erik Hostetler - ECD from 2016-2018 (when our team got moved under Jared)

• Hughston May - Creative Resident in 2018; Jr. Designer starting Jan. 2019

• Jared Kozel - ECD from 2018-2020

• Orin Heidelberg - Sr. Copywriter starting March 2019

• Kalle Thomas - Creative Resident in 2019

• Katie Greco - Creative Resident in 2019

• Clarke Modlin - Art Director starting in Jan. 2020

• Cat Sheehan - Sr. Art Director starting in Nov. 2020

Make social content people care about.

The average person on social media gives any content less than three seconds before they decide to scroll to the next image or video.

THREE SECONDS.

Nobody wants ads in their social feeds.

Arby's was a FUN account to work on because they knew they were the brunt of so many jokes (Thank you, Lisa Simpson and Jon Stewart). So what we achieved in social at the time was legendary.

The Ask

Get people to stop scrolling and start engaging with Arby's on social.

(That's not a big ask at all, right?)

The Idea

Stop making ads.

Get Arby's to behave less like a brand and more like an unabashed fan.

The Execution

We looked at the interests of the members of our team... and got Arby's on board. If we were geeking out about it, then Arby's would be, too.

We made content people actually cared about and made the food secondary.

Targeting niche audiences and interests like gaming, anime, disc golf and woodworking, we built a rabid audience who shared the niche interests the members of our team had... and it WORKED.

The Results

The industry average for brand engagement on social lands somewhere between one and three percent (1-3%), with six percent (6%) being considered "Very High."

Arby's Instagram engagement rate was over 12% for 2019.

Double the rate of "highly engaged" brands.

With follower growth across all channels averaging 19% YoY, we knew we had hit the "stop scrolling, start engaging" goal.

Engagement Labs also gave Arby's credit for our niche-centric social strategy by awarding them the #3 slot in "Most Talkworthy Marketing Online" in 2018.

We also won several awards, which meant the Ad Industry liked what we were doing, too.