Technology

Wendy’s “Pretzel Love Songs” is a master class in social media marketing: Peter Nowak

Pretzel burger music video skillfully harnesses fans’ social attachment

A still from Wendy's ad announcing the return of the Pretzel Burger

From consultants to books to articles, there’s no shortage of resources for companies that want to better use social media to raise awareness of their brands. Some are obviously doing it better than others.

READ: Hearsay social: How to sell using social media »

Wendy’s has cooked up – pardon the pun – a particularly ingenious effort to promote the return of its pretzel bun burger (which is great, by the way) with a Twitter campaign that has obviously been well planned out.

The lyrics to the song in the video below, Pretzel Love Songs, are all taken from tweets by real users, who either lamented the demise of the pretzel burger after its limited-time run expired last year or from their exaltation of its current return. The song, a ’90-style schmaltzy duet, is either funny or forced, depending on your perspective:

Regardless of its artistic merits, the song/video shows some clever planning on Wendy’s part. The company was obviously monitoring and saving tweets from last year for use this year, which is considerably more strategic than the simple blasting out of promotional tweets that many companies do.

Even more clever is the incorporation of real people, who are inevitably hearing about the video and thus spreading it themselves:


On the other hand, Wendy’s forward-thinking does make you wonder about how calculated those “limited-time” offers really are.