An account that looks like chaotic Arby’s fan culture posts a car filled with curly fries, a cashier playing with a fingerboard, and a man eating a mountain of steak chunks inside the restaurant.
The main Arby’s account follows along. The videos look loose, low-fi, and organic. The reach is enormous.
Except the “fans” are part of the marketing.
That is Arby’s Boys—and it is the latest chapter in one of the most useful brand turnarounds in fast food. Long before the account started manufacturing internet chaos, Arby’s had already rebuilt itself around a sharper position, a creator mindset, and a willingness to turn unexpected moments into campaigns.
This is not a three-step agency framework. It is a four-move operator playbook built over more than a decade.
From a struggling chain to Arby’s Boys
Before the turnaround, Arby’s was not losing $150,000 in cash per restaurant every year, as the story is sometimes repeated. The company said it had lost about $150,000 in sales per restaurant across a four-year period—still a major decline for a chain of its size.
The brand was more expensive than typical fast food, less culturally relevant than fast casual, and saddled with one of the oldest customer bases in the category. It needed younger customers and a clearer reason to exist.
Instead of chasing every trend, Arby’s doubled down on the product it was already known for: meat-forward sandwiches. That decision became the foundation for everything that followed.
Move 1: Own the carnivore position with “We Have the Meats”
In July 2014, Arby’s replaced “Slicing Up Freshness” with “We Have the Meats.” The campaign centered on the variety and quality of the chain’s proteins, supported by the broader Meatcraft positioning. Ving Rhames delivered the lines with the intensity of a movie trailer.
The timing mattered. Much of the fast-food category was chasing health-conscious diners, lighter menus, and broad claims about freshness. Arby’s went in the opposite direction.
It stopped apologizing for what it sold.
That is the operator lesson: category leadership by exclusion. Arby’s did not try to become the best option for everybody. It built a clear position around indulgent, meat-focused sandwiches and made the menu the hero.
The message was also designed to attract younger diners. Arby’s leadership acknowledged that the chain had the second-oldest customer base in quick service and needed to stay relevant. Within two years, customers ages 18 to 34 reportedly grew from 38% to 54% of the customer mix.
The broader turnaround included product innovation, remodeling, service improvements, and limited-time offers—not advertising alone. But the numbers show that the system was working. Arby’s reported 8.1% same-store sales growth in 2015, its best performance in more than two decades and more than three times the quick-service industry’s growth rate that year.
The campaign also gave the brand a personality it could use in culture. During the 2014 Grammys, Arby’s tweeted at Pharrell Williams about his hat: “Hey @Pharrell, can we have our hat back?” The moment generated roughly 80,000 retweets and thousands of new followers.
The lesson is not “make a funny tweet.” The lesson is that a sharp brand position makes real-time creativity easier. Everyone already understood why the hat joke belonged to Arby’s.
Move 2: Turn social media into a fan channel, not a billboard
Most restaurant social feeds once looked like digital coupon books. Arby’s built something closer to a fan account.
The team created swords, game items, and pop-culture references from sauce packets, sandwich boxes, and other packaging. The work looked handmade because it was. Instead of forcing a product shot into every post, Arby’s entered niche communities as another fan.
That approach produced measurable engagement. According to the Shorty Awards campaign case study, the Arby’s Instagram account grew followers by nearly 19% year over year and generated an organic engagement rate above 12% in 2019.
The strategic move was simple: act like a creator, not a corporate communications department.
Creators understand that attention has to be earned one post at a time. They observe what the audience cares about, contribute something specific, and accept that not every piece of content needs to appeal to everyone.
That applies directly to home services and local businesses:
- Show the work.
- Film the install.
- Explain the unusual service call.
- Let technicians and operators contribute ideas.
- Publish useful moments before they are polished into lifeless campaign graphics.
Low-fi does not mean careless. It means the idea carries more weight than the production package.
Move 3: Turn the $25 TV mistake into a national campaign
In October 2020, a TikTok user bought a used flat-screen television for $25. When he turned it on, the screen displayed an Arby’s digital menu loop instead of normal television programming.
The first video pulled more than 16.2 million views.
A cautious brand might have ignored the moment or treated the misplaced equipment as a legal problem. Arby’s treated it as the next episode in an ongoing show.
The team responded through comments and duets, displayed the creator’s video on an Arby’s menu screen, and even flew a “We want our TV back” banner over his hometown. Then it converted the internet moment into a product offer: the $5 Missing Menu Meal, available by ordering the meal by name or saying, “I have your TV.”
The response was significant. Marketing Dive reported that Arby’s added more than 200,000 TikTok followers in two weeks, while videos using the #Arbys hashtag generated more than 88 million views during the same period.
This works because the brand had practiced “yes-and” improvisation for years. It did not need six weeks of approvals to decide whether the joke fit. The position and voice were already clear.
The operator lesson: build enough brand clarity that your team can recognize an opportunity and respond before the moment expires.
Move 4: Arby’s Boys—and the manufactured fan account
Arby’s Boys looks like an unofficial fan account run by people with too much time, too many curly fries, and a very specific sense of humor.
That appearance is the strategy.
Fast Company reported that Arby’s Boys is operated by Cousin Labs, an agency hired by Arby’s to create a social feed that behaves like user-generated fan culture. According to Cousin Labs, the account accumulated more than 100 million unpaid views in six months despite having around 45,000 followers.
This is the interest-graph era of social media pushed to its logical conclusion. A brand no longer needs millions of followers if each piece of content can be distributed independently by an algorithm.
The account is engineered to resemble the content real fans make: inside jokes, rough production, absurd scenarios, and a complete lack of corporate polish. But it is still a funded, planned, and measured brand asset.
That creates an ethical tension operators should not ignore.
This is not fans doing the marketing. It is marketing designed to be indistinguishable from fans.
The tactic can generate reach, but it also contributes to what Fast Company calls the “suspicion economy”—an environment where audiences increasingly assume every organic-looking cultural moment might be a campaign.
What other brands should steal
The Arby’s system has four layers.
1. Own a position competitors cannot borrow
“We Have the Meats” works because it is specific to the product. A competitor could copy the tone, but not the claim without looking ridiculous.
Audit your own positioning. Are you apologizing for what you sell? Are you describing the business with the same safe words every competitor uses? That is usually a sign the position is too weak.
2. Build a voice your team can actually use
A good brand voice is not a paragraph in a style guide. It helps people make decisions.
Arby’s knew how to respond to Pharrell’s hat and the $25 TV because the team understood the role the brand played: confident, self-aware, meat-obsessed, and willing to be the joke.
Your point of view should be obvious in every post, ad, sales conversation, and customer experience.
3. Post like a creator
Let real people contribute. Film the real work. Respond to what is happening now. Make content for specific communities instead of trying to please the whole market.
The cost of low-fi content can be close to zero. The cost of bland content is invisible attention.
4. Know the difference between community and manufactured reach
Arby’s Boys proves that brands can manufacture the appearance of fandom and still generate enormous distribution.
That does not make it a durable community.
There is a difference between content people watch and a brand people trust. The strongest operators use short-term attention tactics to introduce a long-term position—not as a substitute for one.
Where the playbook cracks
Bold positioning is a long-term asset. A covert fan page is a tactic.
The “We Have the Meats” platform has lasted because it is rooted in product truth. The $25 TV worked because the response matched an established brand personality. Arby’s Boys depends on novelty, continuous production, and an audience willing to play along after learning that the account is sponsored brand content.
That does not mean the tactic is useless. It means it has a different job.
Use attention hacks to create an opening. Use a clear brand, useful product, consistent experience, and honest customer value to keep the relationship.
The practical takeaway
Arby’s did not rebuild itself with one viral post. It created a position that made years of creative decisions easier.
That is the part worth stealing.
Set a sharp point of view. Make the product the hero. Give the team room to create. Move quickly when culture hands you an opportunity. Experiment with new distribution tactics—but do not confuse manufactured attention with earned trust.
The real question is not whether Arby’s Boys can generate another hundred million views.
It is whether your brand is clear enough to earn attention without wearing a disguise.
Sources
- Nation’s Restaurant News: Arby’s reports best same-store sales in two decades
- QSR Web: Arby’s shifts focus to proteins with new marketing campaign
- Shorty Awards: Arby’s on Instagram
- Marketing Dive: Arby’s flips viral TikTok videos into special menu item
- Fast Company: What comes after the “Suspicion Economy”
- Forbes: How Arby’s carved a successful brand message by staying true to itself