Wendy's coupon gets more valuable with each retweet

UPDATE: Oct. 14, 2020: Wendy's coupon on Twitter was retweeted 10.8K times, translating to customers receiving 30% off a breakfast order on the Uber Eats app through Friday morning, per the parameters of the promotion.

Brief:

Wendy's and Uber Eats are offering a coupon on Twitter that will get more valuable the more people share it on the social platform in a 24-hour period. The coupon at the @wendys account on Twitter has a sliding scale that shows how discounts on its breakfast menu increase as more people retweet the offer.
The first 100 retweets are good for 10% off, while 5,000 retweets increase the offer to 30% off. Wendy's is offering 44% off for 44,444 retweets and 99% off for more than 3.3 million retweets — the same number of its Twitter follower account. The deadline to re-tweet the offer is 12 p.m. CT today.
The effort looks to use the viral power of Twitter's retweet functionality to broaden the reach of the coupon, which comes as Wendy's looks to build on growth in the breakfast daypart. The discount is available on any Wendy's breakfast order of more than $15 in the Uber Eats app on Oct. 14-16.

Insight:

Wendy's offer of a coupon that gets more valuable with each retweet is a novel way to engage its followers while extending the organic reach of its campaign. As of the morning of Oct. 13, the coupon had received more than 10,000 retweets, putting it on course to hit the 30% off mark. A sudden surge in retweets could push the discount to its next threshold, though the 3.3 million mark appears to be unobtainable to receive food for almost free.

Wendy's campaign is reminiscent of past efforts to urge people to spread its messaging in a viral campaign. Last year, Wendy's promised to bring back its popular spicy chicken nuggets if Twitter users responded to its challenge to "like" a tweet more than 2 million times. The tweet easily reached that number of likes, and Wendy's subsequently offered free orders of the menu item to Twitter users who used a special code in the DoorDash delivery app. Before that, Wendy's broke Twitter records with its #NuggsForCarter push that challenged a customer to get 18 million retweets for a year of free chicken nuggets.

The partnership with Uber Eats demonstrates the importance of delivery for QSR chains, especially during the pandemic. Delivery helped double Wendy's digital sales last quarter, and the company has partnerships with all major delivery services, per Restaurant Business.

Wendy's launched its breakfast menu nationwide in March, before the coronavirus pandemic led many cities and states to implement lockdowns. With fewer people commuting to work and school, the outlook for its breakfast business looked dim. However, breakfast has become a bright spot for the burger chain, making up 8% of total sales in Q2, according to a quarterly report. At that time, Wendy's said it would increase marketing for its breakfast menu during the second half of the year, according to Restaurant Dive, a sister publication to Mobile Marketer. Wendy's positive results from its breakfast menu contrast with the sales pressures faced by chains including McDonald's, Dunkin' and Starbucks, CNN reported.