2017 is a weird time to be a brand. Where once the marketing arms of major fast food conglomerates were just expected to find inventive ways to say “Our square hamburgers will briefly stave off your body’s endless need for sustenance,” the fast food social media ecosystem has now become a much wilder place. Today’s savvy chain is expected to not just field questions about screwed-up orders and the company’s current promotions, but also to be a true renaissance brand, holding forth on everything from dating advice to free nugget demands to the hot pop culture questions of the day.
Few corporate Twitter accounts push this angle as hard as Wendy’s’, which rarely lets an opportunity to weigh in on the zeitgeist go by. Today, the fast food chain offered up its opinion on a question that’s recently become the “Is a hot dog a sandwich?” of David Lynch obsessives everywhere: Is Showtime’s Twin Peaks revival series The Return a TV show, or a very long, serialized film?
To be fair, the Wendy’s account only waded into this latest controversy because a fan asked (just like when it named Nintendo’s Zelda: Breath Of The Wild the official Wendy’s video game selection of 2017, or offered its endorsement for Lady Bird or Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri.) Still, we have to admit that the fast food chili dispensary offered up a pretty thoughtful response to the question, one we’d usually associate with at least a slow-dining establishment like Applebee’s or Olive Garden, in the overall hierarchy of chain restaurant TV critical thought: