Twitter is all about quality over quantity—and we don’t just mean because you only have 140 characters to work with. In less than 60 tweets, the Nihilist Arby’s joke account has garnered nearly 14,000 followers since it entered the ring on January 14. That averages out to something like 233 new followers per fatalistic tweet.
https://twitter.com/nihilist_arbys/status/555611954434551808
No-one knows the identity of the person behind the account, whose bio states that it’s not affiliated with the real Arby’s in any way. But whoever they are, they’re killing it when it comes to social-media engagement. According to AdWeek, Nihilist Arby’s has an almost-unheard-of 113% user-engagement rate, meaning every follower is favoriting or retweeting every post.
https://twitter.com/nihilist_arbys/status/555842416734134272
Arby’s official account has a lot more followers (391,000) but only a 4.3% engagement rate, reports AdWeek. And Arby’s is actually pretty good on Twitter. It’s recent response to Jon Stewart’s retirement announcement was a huge win, and around the Grammys the brand took the opportunity to remind us that it totally owns Pharrell’s hat.
https://twitter.com/nihilist_arbys/status/557641955732369408
What makes Nihilist Arby’s tweets so damn funny is the contrast between its life-is-meaningless POV and what fast food brands usually do on Twitter, which is try to sound like over-enthusiastic teenagers. Since the majority of Twitter users are under 30 years old, brands like iHop and Taco Bell have taken to dropping slang, emoji, and plentiful exclamation marks in an effort to connect with the kids. Arby’s isn’t quite that extreme—mainly it references pop culture and uses a lot of hashtags—but it isn’t above trying to sound young.
https://twitter.com/Arbys/status/546721941949005825
https://twitter.com/nihilist_arbys/status/563495213440569344
What would really depress the supposed nihilist behind the account (aside from everything) is that they’ve most likely raised Arby’s brand awareness and possibly even boosted sales. Arby’s wouldn’t respond to AdWeek’s request for comment, which led to jokes about the company being behind the account. Just think about how amazing it would be if that were true.
[via AdWeek]