Brief:

• Wendy's is promoting its summer beverages by publishing romance stories on Wattpad, the social network for authors and readers that reaches 65 million users a month, Adweek reports. Each short story has a theme based on one of the drinks: Berry Cherry Fruit Tea, Strawberry Watermelon Fruit Tea, Honest Tropical Green Tea, Limeade, Strawberry Lemonade and All Natural Lemonade.
• Wendy's isn't paying Wattpad to run the campaign, but instead set up a normal profile like any user. For the summer drinks campaign, the burger chain wanted to reach younger women, a demographic group that is very active on Wattpad, Jimmy Bennett, senior director of media and social for Wendy's, told Adweek.
• Wendy's is the first brand to set up its own profile on the platform. The company will manage the profile with help from agency VML, whose creative team wrote the text for the romance stories.

Insight:

Wendy's summer beverage push on Wattpad may help the brand to develop a following the same way it has on other social media platforms, notably Twitter. As the stories cleverly parody romance novels, they also highlight the characteristics of each summer drink with lines like, "Courtney bit her lip. She wanted to take the Fruit Tea and run away, run from all the troubles of the world, leaving behind her old life to start anew."

The Wattpad platform was reportedly appealing to Wendy's because of its large user base, and provided a chance to have organic conversations about content that could potentially go viral, generating more publicity for the brand. On other social media platforms, Wendy's trails other fast-food chains in performance metrics, according to a study by ShareIQ. Taco Bell was the leading fast-food brand on Facebook, racking up 491,500 "likes" during the Q1 2018 study period, 29 times that of Wendy's.

Meanwhile, the Wendy's Twitter account focuses on actively engaging with users of the social platform by trading barbs with other fast-food brands and gently mocking people who invite a public roasting. Wendy's also uses the platform to respond to customer complaints and to promote its use of fresh, rather than frozen, beef. The burger chain has 2.7 million followers on Twitter, compared with McDonald's 3.6 million, although McDonald's also has separate accounts for countries such as Brazil, Japan and South Korea.