This case study explains how Wendy’s, a fast food chain, broke stagnation, and increased sales by using its unique brand voice on Twitter to remind consumers about its use of fresh, never frozen beef.

• Wendy’s has always been different than other fast food restaurants when it comes to the quality of food served. However, most consumers either don’t know that or don’t believe it. They tend to view all large fast food restaurants as offering virtually the same products.

• Wendy’s was lagging behind its competition due to stagnant sales, and in order to convince customers to dine at Wendy’s instead of the competition, we knew we had to reclaim our core differentiator —that Wendy’s serves fresh, never frozen beef.

• So when McDonald’s was about to announce fresh beef of their own, we knew we had to out-smart the competition where we could not out-spend them.

• Leveraging our social community on Twitter, Wendy’s was able to have conversations with our consumers, doubters, and competition in a tone that was pitch perfect to our unique brand voice. Which generated billions of earned media impressions, and increased awareness that Wendy’s serves fresh, never frozen beef.

• The noise that Wendy’s generated was translated into increased traffic to Wendy’s restaurants, which lead to an increase of 2.4% in sales of Wendy’s hamburgers — breaking the stagnation and increasing market share.