When Dave Thomas founded Wendy’s in 1969, he developed a brand set on standing out in the fast food industry by doing things that consumers could love, and doing them the right way. Wendy’s was the fast food challenger brand with charm. We were the brand that was changing the game. Fast-forward 50 years, however, and most American consumers have begun to view us in the same way they do the other traditional fast food brands. Along the way, America became infatuated with new challengers in the category like Five Guys or Shake Shack. Instead of being a restaurant people looked forward to visiting, we became just another source of fuel along their busy day.

Our Wendy’s client came to us with one simple request (although difficult to achieve): “Make America fall in love with Wendy’s again.”

In order to get love, you must give love. It’s in the Bible. Bands sing about it. Self-help gurus have hour long specials about it. We all crave — nay, need — appreciation and affirmation, even if we’re terrible at giving it to one another.

When Americans want to show love and appreciation, we create holidays (Yep, second insight.). It may be traditional like Valentine’s Day or a more modern holiday like Thank a Mail Carrier Day. It might be informal like a Friendaversary. Regardless, holidays are how we show we care.

Creating a holiday to show America how much we love them seemed like the perfect idea.

But what if we showed our love differently? Like if we roasted America instead? Well, when it comes to Wendy’s, people love our roasts. In fact, they love our roasts so much that they became the foundation of our new national holiday.

How can we make America fall in love with Wendy’s again? Qualitative research told us that consumers build relationships with people, not companies. Data shows us 80% of Americans report eating fast food at least once a month; intricate segmentation models don’t solve the problem. Besides, you don’t create emotion —- love —- with logic.

You create emotion with emotion.

As part of National Roast Day, we’d roast anyone who would ask for it. Why? Because they ask us every single day on every social platform we are on. If Valentine’s Day is devoted to momentous displays of love and affection, then National Roast Day will be the one day a year when Wendy’s shows our love and affection the Wendy’s way: by roasting our followers and fans.

Social media users ask to be roasted by Wendy’s all year long, on every social platform we are active on. And roast them we did. We declared January 4th #NationalRoastDay and began handing out roasts to anyone and everyone who asked us for it.

Who did we roast? Men, women, children, children who really deserved it, dogs who didn’t, gamers, bands, brands, washed up bands, National Hockey League teams, more brands, celebrities, nobodies, celebrity nobodies (aka influencers), even more brands.

In fact, even sending a roast every 66 seconds, we were still unable to roast everyone who asked for it.

National Roast Day set Twitter on fire.

#NationalRoastDay was so talked about that it actually became a trending topic on Twitter in the United States organically. In making this cultural holiday, mentions of Wendy’s increased by 727%.

We earned more than 62.4 million organic Twitter impressions with an 11.2% average engagement rate, surpassing our benchmark by more than 5.5 times.

Media outlets began reporting on our holiday, and this garnered more than 101 million earned media impressions in a matter of hours.

And then, in a true case of holiday magic, people started having fun with it and began roasting each other. It turned into a day that brought us all together. One earth. One people. One love.

Wendy’s has become known for its sassy Twitter replies, and cultural moments like our mixtape and #NuggsForCarter. Therefore, consumers are asking Wendy’s to roast them every day of the year, on every social media platform Wendy’s is on, and even the ones we aren’t on.

Roasting (insulting, trash talking, talking smack, etc.) is practically an American art form. We create content around it. We celebrate the leaders of it in sports. There are comedians famous only for their ability to roast seemingly without mercy. We cringe at the veracity of these insults, yet we cannot get enough of them.

Roasts are also a way of showing endearment to the people closest to you. When you are allowed to insult others or you bear the brunt of one of their insults, you know you are one of the group.