Brief:

• Bush's Beans boosted its Twitter impressions by 68 times and profile visits by 35 times after enlisting a superfan to run its account. Bush's Beans accepted a challenge by Harrison McNeill, an 18-year-old freshman at Florida State University, to run its @BushsBeans account on the social media platform, per an announcement shared with Mobile Marketer.​
• McNeill created a Twitter account, @goodbeanjokes, to post humorous content about beans and to get the attention of brands such as Steak-Umm, MoonPie and Bush's Beans. McNeill was hired by agency Tombras Group, which runs the popular MoonPie account, and formed a partnership with Bush's to create "bean-tastic content" for the brand's followers, per the announcement.
• Bush's has seen a 15% increase in Twitter followers and more than 1 million impressions from a single tweet after enlisting McNeill to run the account. McNeill also has generating more likes, replies and retweets than the brand had seen before, per Bush's.

Insight:

By enlisting McNeill to run its Twitter account, Bush's is adopting a strategy that has worked for other brands that seek to engage social media users with humorous content. Twitter users, especially ad-averse young adults, need a reason to follow a brand's account. McNeill's humorous posts to his @goodbeanjokes account have built a following of more than 63,000, compared with only about 8,000 for @BushsBeans. It's likely that the brand will gain a much bigger following by boosting its Twitter presence with more original content.

​Bush's joins the packaged foods brands that have boosted their Twitter presence to engage users of the platform. Frito-Lay brand Lay's last month placed the fate of one potato named Spud into the hands of its followers ahead of National Potato Day. Similarly, Heinz last summer ran a Twitter poll asking followers whether it should introduce a ketchup-mayonnaise blend product.

As Wendy's has demonstrated, witty posts including sassy takedowns of competitors are popular on Twitter. The burger chain's efforts have included a troll campaign targeting rival McDonald's on National Frozen Food Day in March. Follower feedback on Twitter also has led Wendy's to make menu changes and reintroduce popular products. The burger chain last month brought back spicy chicken nuggets after a campaign went viral on Twitter, and last year used Twitter to promote limited-edition items like its bacon maple chicken sandwich. Two years ago, Wendy's broke Twitter records when #NuggsForCarter push that challenged one customer to get 18 million retweets for a year's worth of free chicken generated massive publicity.