“Go big or go home” is the attitude of many advertisers, and it’s one that often works. In 2018, Arby’s needed a way to win over fast food fans, and it launched a larger-than-life campaign to commit. The strategy was as simple as landing two consecutive Guinness World Records (and no, making the world’s longest meat sandwich wasn’t one of them).
Prior to that spring, Arby’s had always carried Pepsi products. All this changed when Coca-Cola offered a better contract to Arby’s just as its partnership with Pepsi was up for expiration. When every meal combo comes with a drink, it’s a big decision to switch out Mountain Dew for Mellow Yellow or Starry for Sprite. To announce the switch-up (betrayal, even), Arby’s had to take a very large — and very small — risk by creating the world’s largest and smallest physical advertisements.
Out in the sticks of Monowi, Nebraska, a banner spanning over 7 acres appeared with a single message: “Arby’s now has Coke.” Thankfully, the village’s single inhabitant, Elise Eiler, was a fan of both and had no qualms about hosting the advertisement in her backyard. Preceding this poster, Arby’s recruited some bright minds from the Institute for Electronics and Nanotechnology at Georgia Tech to engrave a burger bun’s sesame seed with the tagline, “A big announcement is coming. This isn’t it.”
Read more: What Type Of Steak Does McDonald’s Use For Its Breakfast Sandwiches?
Arby’s Has Won A Few Unexpected Guinness World Records
Guinness World Records Certificate – Arby’s / YouTube
Arby’s broadcast its ambitious advertisements to television in June 2018 through a commercial featuring the people who made the experiment possible. It now had two — nope, three — Guinness World Records in advertisement under its belt with the “Big Announcement.”
Look at that: a short, sweet, and to-the-point commercial under two minutes. Commercials seem nearly inescapable today, even while paying for premium services, but some ads are simply ridiculous in length. Arby’s, challenging the fake roast beef allegations, got candid in a 2013 commercial that lasted 13 hours. Was it an all-intensive documentary series? Nah, it was just footage of roast beef in a smoker “with real smoke from real wood that’s on real fire.” Ironically, Arby’s did not specify that the roast beef was real, but perhaps some things insist upon themselves.
Before the streaming era reached its heights, no major cable network would want to waste such precious airing time on a single fast food ad with an abysmal audience retention value. However, one hero managed to pull it off. Under the web of NBC, MyNetworkTV, and other cable entertainment mostly relegated to waiting rooms, a subchannel called My9 rose to the occasion. This channel was local only to Duluth, Minnesota, under KJBR-TV, so don’t feel too bad if you missed 13 hours of Arby’s Smokehouse Brisket videography.
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