Arby’s - SONIC REAL TIME

Shorty Awards 2020 - Silver for Best Real Time Response - Arby's Sonic Movie

The studio behind the Sonic the Hedgehog movie made major 3D design updates to Sonic as a result of massive fan complaints because of his depiction in the trailers. Sonic’s makeover was a trending topic across social, so Arby’s leveraged the trending conversation to create a meme based on a popular meme format. To do so, we created a “before and after” image of Sonic using our popular Arby’s packaging build medium. Arby’s added some additional flair and snark by depicting the before image as literal paper trash, reflecting the widely accepted assumption that the first designs of Sonic in the original trailer were not acceptable. The content we created drove social engagement among our fans and built upon Arby’s well-established relevance within the gaming space by activating quickly, while the conversation was still hot.

RESULTS

The Arby’s team acted quickly on the meme opportunity by acknowledging the Sonic character’s transformation via a packaging build––the medium that our social media audiences have grown to love.

The Sonic post received over 4.1K RTs and 23K likes on Twitter, with a social engagement rate of 3.5%, which is more than 3X what we typically see on our Twitter posts. With Instagram, it organically received 13K shares and 50K likes, with a social engagement rate of 22.6%. Coincidentally, it was our most successful organic post to date on both platforms. All engagement was earned without any paid support. 

Agency: FKA/Moxie (Publicis)