Prior to Wendy’s, most brands used social media as a customer service channel or to post brand-safe media. Wendy’s needed people to fall in love with its brand, and we operated from the simple truth that people don’t love businesses. They love people. So we became the brand that uses the internet more like a person than a brand. Wendy’s has become the gold standard for its human approach to social media and consistently entertaining actions, changing how brands act and influence culture online. Which led Wendy’s to overtake Burger King — becoming the No. 2 burger chain in America.

Fast food was fun when it emerged decades ago. It was emotive. It was a treat. Over time, it became cold and functional, and Wendy’s fell by the wayside in the American imagination. In a category dominated by McDonald’s, which has nearly three restaurants for every one of ours, Wendy’s will never be the most readily available or convenient. Our best chance at thriving is to be more meaningful than functional to consumers. For the last five years, Wendy’s standing brief has been “Make America fall in love with Wendy’s again.” While older generations have fond memories of Wendy’s, 18- to 34-year-olds — fast food’s most frequent consumers — knew the brand as a hamburger restaurant their parents and grandparents liked.

Therefore, our objective was to rekindle the spark and love that America once had for Wendy’s.

Emotional connection drives sales: consumers who feel a connection to a brand spend twice as much as those who don’t. To compete with fast food giants, we have to connect with our consumers on a deeper level than the function of our food.

Our task has been to make Wendy’s culturally relevant again to drive distinction and sales. To grow cultural relevance, you have to go where culture is created. That has increasingly been online, which just so happens to be where the most frequent fast food consumers spend their time.

Therefore, our objective was to increase our relevance from the younger, digitally savvy audience that frequently eats fast food. To drive sales, we needed to build brand affinity among the next generation of fast food eaters.

Before us, most brands used social media as a customer service channel. Wendy’s needed people to fall in love with its brand, so our insight was based on a simple human truth: People don’t love businesses; they love people. Our breakthrough thinking came from getting deep into that truth and pushing it towards the edges. We decided to use social media more like a person and the creators they admire online. Our approach to resonate with our audience was to act more like them. Our goal was to turn Wendy’s into a celebrity influencer embedded in U.S. culture; our strategy was to act more like a celebrity influencer.

Most brands pay influencers big bucks to borrow their credibility and reach new audiences. Wendy’s has taken the opposite approach. Instead of buying into culture, we’ve helped create it, becoming a cultural influencer in our own right.

To be a cultural influencer, you have to push the boundaries of accepted culture. So we redefined how brands can act online, deciding to behave more like a human than a staid corporation. After all, people don’t love businesses; people love people. Our task was to make people love the Wendy’s brand; we needed to act more human. And humans are dynamic, they’re not static data points on a chart in a powerpoint presentation. Therefore, some flexibility would be needed to evolve with culture and changing interests while still maintaining consistency of the Wendy’s brand.

So we acted human. Wendy’s became famous for its sassy, charismatic Twitter, redefining how brands act online with moments like #NuggsforCarter and #NationalRoastDay. We released a chart-topping mixtape. We became a top 1% streaming gamer on Twitch.

And people loved us. Mainstream entertainment outlets — “Good Morning America,” “The Daily Show,” Netflix’s “Space Force,” and “Dave,” to name a few — name-dropped us for cachet. We even got referenced inside an NFL huddle. We’ve generated more than 54.6 billion earned media impressions.

To build affinity among the next generation of fast food eaters, Wendy’s became the kind of creator they love, and a cultural authority people and brands wanted to associate with.

Wendy’s doesn’t buy affinity, we earn it. So while America fell in love with Wendy’s again, Wendy’s experienced 15 straight quarters of sales growth, overtaking Burger King to become the No. 2 fast food hamburger restaurant in America.

Our long-term strategic plan has been clear, simple, and human-based: Act like a likeable person so that people pay more attention to us, develop a sense of emotional connection to the brand, and choose Wendy’s more often when they want fast food.

We articulate Wendy’s long-term social media strategy as “Make friends and invite them to lunch.” Convenience rules in fast food, but Wendy’s has significantly fewer restaurants than other leading competitors. We need the average person to drive past three McDonald’s restaurants to come to Wendy’s instead. To combat this disadvantage, our strategy has been to create a brand and persona that is more likable to grow brand affinity and distinctiveness. Our belief has been that people will pay attention to us if they like us, letting us communicate our selling propositions and product differentiators more effectively to overcome inconvenience.