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The girl behind six who became the girl in front of 32,000
18th November 2011. Posted by Lucas Owen. Trackback
This week, Twitter gameshow hostess @GirlBehindSix revealed her true identity: ‘Wendy’, of American hamburger chain Wendy’s.
The account was created as part of an elaborate stealth marketing campaign to launch Wendy’s new medium-sized ‘W Burger’. Firstly, let’s gloss over the description of this meaty behemoth as, in any way, ‘medium-sized’ (next they'll be calling it a vegetable); what’s more impressive is the rapid – and wonderfully cheap – way that the marketing scheme has operated.
The Twitter handle refers to the vacant space 6 on Wendy’s menu boards and, aside from a few carefully-placed ads along Sixth Avenue and on New York City’s 6 subway line (see what they did there?), the campaign’s only paid-for advertising was a one-day Twitter promoted trend bought by Wendy’s.
GirlBehindSix described her activities as a ‘140-character gameshow’, in which she challenged her followers to complete various tasks in exchange for prizes like mopeds and voice-activated robots – with six of each to give away. A spokesperson from the ad agency behind the campaign said the prizes were imagined as “things you wanted, but would never buy for yourself”; quite what this is supposed to say about the W Burger I’m not sure, but he’s quite wrong about the voice-activated robot. I have my credit card in my hand.
The gameshow concept obviously struck a chord with Twitter users – over 32,000 followed the account in a little over a month since it appeared with no outward affiliation to the burger chain; its speeding from 0 to 72 on the Klout scale of online influence is testament to the campaign’s success. This is all very impressive, especially as it’s taken me the best part of two years to amass 1500 Twitter followers and a Klout score of 45, and a comparable campaign for Wendy’s Baconator in 2009 (where do they get these names from, honestly?) gathered half the latest campaign's number of followers in double the time.
The GirlBehindSix and Wendy’s now face a greater challenge: how to herd those 32,000 across to the Wendy’s account. They’ve started by relocating the gameshow to the chain’s official Twitter feed and limiting entries to those following the Wendy’s account. Uptake is, perhaps unsurprisingly, relatively minimal.
What may have been a better idea would be to keep the GirlBehindSix account going as some kind of secondary Wendy’s persona by renaming it (finally possible, thank you, oh Gods of Twitter) – perhaps as the voice of Wendy herself, chronicling her fictitious weekends and using humour to ingratiate the brand with its already amassed followers. At the moment, the hard work is unravelling as tweeters recognise the gameshow as a short-term ploy to bait their hearts and flee in their droves.
No doubt the W Burger will be a success – in my time living Stateside, I never met an American who didn’t love a burger – but I can’t help but feel what was an almost-perfect campaign has ended up a missed opportunity.