The degree to which social media engagement translates into sales for businesses has been an open question. In many cases, it can be hard to measure. However, a new study established that engaging in a little banter with rival brands over X (formerly Twitter) helped drive in-store visits, particularly in the context of launching a new product. 

The first caveat is that the authors of the study, led by Ashutosh Bhave, an assistant professor of marketing at the U of A, do mean banter and not disparaging attacks. Banter, they suggest, is spontaneous and not part of a planned marketing strategy, such as the cola wars of yore. The example they studied was a series of online interactions in 2019 between Popeye’s Louisiana Chicken, Wendy’s and Chick-fil-A following the release of a new spicy chicken sandwich by Popeye’s. Chick-fil-A took a playful jab at Popeye’s, Wendy’s joined in, and Popeye’s answered back (all of them making the case for their own product). The tone of the exchange was playful and light, leaning into informal language like, “Y’all good?” 

The upshot was this largely genial banter playing out in real time greatly increased the volume of tweets associated with Popeye’s, Chick-fil-A and Wendy’s (by 2,111 percent, 1,036 percent and 920 percent, respectively). More importantly, it also drove offline sales for Popeye’s, which saw a 54 percent increase in visits per store. Alas, Chick-fil-A and Wendy’s did not see a similar spike for in-store traffic, suggesting that engaging in banter may help a rival but not you. 

Arguably, Chick-fil-A likely made a tactical mistake in engaging with Popeye’s, a much smaller company. The one thing that Popeye’s and Chick-fil-A have in common is that their customers like chicken sandwiches. So Chick-fil-A was unintentionally letting their customers know about Popeye’s new sandwich. So, the banter didn’t so much hurt Chick-fil-A as help Popeye’s. 

“Popeye’s is a much smaller player in the whole industry,” Bhave commented. “Chick-fil-A kind of handed the ball to Popeye’s, which suddenly put them in the same league.” 

The findings were published in the Journal of Social Media in Society. Bhave said his research focuses not so much on social media but on how exogenous, or external, events can impact sales – by which he means events that create a clear before and after. In this case, the event was Chick-fil-A’s decision to engage with Popeye’s on social media a week after they had launched a product. Prior to that engagement, Popeye’s had not seen a big uptick in in-store visits as a result of the new launch.  

Much of the paper is dedicated to explaining the authors’ methodology, including how offline sales were determined in relation to search trends, phone location data and in-store visits, which is the best measure of increased sales. The researchers also wanted to disentangle the short-term effects of Twitter banter from the long-term effects of the product launch.  

Ultimately, the authors concluded that "the results imply that Popeye’s benefited more from the banter than the other two fast-food brands. It gained more value than its rivals and even more so in the Southern states, indicating the roles of brand heritage.” Nor was the benefit only short-term. The authors estimated that Popeye’s saw a nearly 30 percent increase in store visits in the six months following the launch. 

The authors noted that if companies want to engage in banter with competing brands, they should follow two rules: “(1) strategize ways to infuse humor rather than using disparaging tones and (2) refrain from interacting with rivals boasting newly launched products.”  

Bhave’s co-authors included Sriharsha Kamatham, an assistant professor at the University of Manitoba, and Norris L. Bruce, a professor at the University of North Carolina.

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