2019 was the Year of the Popeyes Chicken Sandwich, and it’s all thanks to one genius social strategist: Angela Brown.
The chicken sandwich came out in August of this year and immediately broke the internet. It wasn’t the sandwich itself that really brought the frenzied attention, though. It was one tweet that Popeyes posted in response to a slightly underhanded tweet from Chick-fil-A about their own chicken sandwich.
“…y’all good?” the Popeyes tweet read.
That tweet went massively viral and caused the popularity of the sandwich to shoot into the stratosphere, leading some customers to literally commit crimes just to get their hands on one.
The tweet came from the mind of Angela Brown, who works for GSD&M, the Austin, Texas-based ad agency that worked with Popeyes to market the sandwich.
Angela was named the Daily Dot’s Internet Person of the Year for her work on the marketing campaign, especially that infamous tweet.
The tweet wasn’t part of Angela and her team’s original advertising plan, but it obviously changed the game. So why was it so successful?
It was the perfect two-word zinger, calling Chick-fil-A out without being overly negative. But also, it tapped into the culture and language of “Black Twitter,” one of the most active and influential demographics on the platform.
The success of this tweet speaks to the power of hiring black creatives at ad agencies — and truly giving them a seat at the table.
“There is something unprecedented and incredible about the power that a two-word tweet had to ignite a collective of people who already are extremely creative and extremely loyal—when they want to be loyal to something,” Angela explained to the Daily Dot.
“There’s a lot of things that [as a Black person/woman] I’ll bring to the table that our team will bring to the table that our clients aren’t aware of.”
Popeyes’ success may be unusual, but ultimately, it’s a useful lesson for any company’s social media presence.
