How Arby's Dealt With Their Greatest Twitter Troll By Being Awesome; Also Sandwiches And Puppies

from the thumbs-up dept

There are many ways to handle being trolled on Twitter if you're a company or a famous person. You can track down the trolls, investing hundreds of hours all for a payoff that amounts to showing up at their house physically and making them uncomfortable. You can figure out who the trolls are and call their parents, because that's apparently a thing that actually happened. Or you can be James Woods, completely the worst, and whip out the lawsuits to unmask the troll and then gloat gleefully like a three year old that stole his favorite popsicle when the guy happens to die.

Now, all of those methods for dealing with internet trolls range from mildly annoying to evil (James Woods), but they are obviously not the only options. You could go the Arby's route and simply be awesome and human and have fun with the whole thing. The fast food chain recently decided to have a little fun with its most famous Twitter troll: Nihilist Arby's. Now, if you're not familiar with Nihilist Arby's, it's a Twitter account with 300k followers and daily affirmations that include such advice as:

The entire feed is massively entertaining, but the man behind the account also released the following manifesto when news and advertising groups were trying to figure out who the hell was behind all of this.

Once that video went viral, the countdown clock to unmasking @nihilist_arbys had begun. Arby's, meanwhile, in the midst of being praised for its own hip social media activity in engaging with Jon Stewart when he retired and being cool with Pharrell Williams wearing a hat that was an accidental nod to its own logo, certainly noticed the account. The chain kept tabs on it without ever interacting with it directly or threatening any action against it, when suddenly Nihilist Arby's was unmasked as Brendan Kelly, who worked both in advertising and performed in punk rock bands.

Arby's CEO Paul Brown and his marketing team read the piece.

"We had discussions around what do we do with that? And we said, 'Well, one, even if we wanted to do something, we couldn't,'" Brown told Business Insider. "But we also had a little fun with him, too."

What did that fun amount to? Well, the company flew an executive to Chicago. That executive went to Kelly's place of business and asked security to inform him that Arby's had arrived to see him.

Six days after the Adweek story, Kelly was at FCB's offices in Chicago's John Hancock Center preparing to leave early for a secret job interview he'd landed as a result of that profile. Before he could leave, he got a call around 3:30 from the building's front desk letting him know that a team from Arby's was there to see him.

Christopher Fuller, Arby's senior vice president of communications, was there with several members of Arby's marketing team, a bag full of sandwiches, and a black Labrador puppy they had borrowed from a friend. They greeted Kelly and handed him a handwritten note on Arby's stationery: "Cheer up, buddy. You live in a world with puppies...and sandwiches."

Now, other companies and people should take notice, because this is how it's done. Dealing with trolls is annoying, even trolls as relatively benign as Nihilist Arby's. Still, companies and the people that run them have an understandable amount of pride, and being a tool for what must seem like a never ending joke can be uncomfortable, if not not damned infuriating. To their credit, the folks at Arby's decided to go the fun route instead, with an apparent eye towards just simply being human and awesome.

Brown and his leadership team discussed the Adweek profile. Brown said it could be difficult as a CEO to see your company be the subject of harsh jokes, but that the success of playfully sparring with Stewart earlier that year was a teaching moment.

"Do you write a cease-and-desist letter?" Brown said. "The way I look at it is what kind of person do you want to be a friend with? You don't want to be a friend with that kind of a person who's defensive and you can't joke around."

It's a refreshing attitude to see coming from a company as big as Arby's. Kelly, meanwhile, was super into the interaction and posted it to his own Twitter followers, which likely ingratiated the company to the public even more. Smart business, smart PR, all by being awesome and human instead of freaking out.

Filed Under: brendan kelly, nihilist arbys, trolls
Companies: arby's