Arby’s Buys Pharrell’s Grammys Hat, Rides #Oscars Buzz With Timely Tweet

Arby’s garnered lots of attention with a tweet to Pharrell on Grammy’s night asking for its hat back. Turns out Pharrell put the now famous Vivienne Westwood creation on eBay for charity in February. In serendipitous — though more likely brilliantly strategic — fashion, the auction ended at 5 PM Pacific Time on the day of the Oscars.

Pharrell sent out a thank you tweet to the auction winner. Arby’s quickly tweeted back with proof it was the auction winner and wished Pharrell luck at the #Oscars in the contest for Original Song.

.@Pharrell You’re welcome. We’re HAPPY to support a great cause & get our hat back. Good luck at the #Oscars tonight! pic.twitter.com/2oA7qDPX9z

— Arby’s (@Arbys) March 3, 2014

While the tweet didn’t hit the level of Grammys night, which topped more than 80,000 retweets and nearly 50,000 favorites, the brand has received more than 7,000 retweets and 5,500 favorites for its Oscars night nod. Not bad for an evening dominated by Ellen’s record-setting selfie tweet.

Josh Martin, Arby’s social media manager, told Marketing Land back in January that the team had been discussing ways to extend the social buzz from their Grammys Twitter exchange with Pharrell and had reached out about using the hat in future promotions. Now that the hat is in their possession, we’ll have to see what else they have planned for their social media lucky charm.

About The Author

Ginny Marvin

Ginny Marvin was formerly Third Door Media’s Editor-in-Chief, running the day-to-day editorial operations across all publications and overseeing paid media coverage. Ginny Marvin writes about paid digital advertising and analytics news and trends for Search Engine Land, Marketing Land and MarTech Today. With more than 15 years of marketing experience, Ginny has held both in-house and agency management positions. She can be found on Twitter as @ginnymarvin.