Wendy’s Review Analysis - Is Wendy’s Edgy Twitter Persona Paying Off?

Review analysis insights can tell a brand how to find that perfect balance in its marketing mix, with market-driven pricing, repeat customers, and a fruitful social media presence. In this article, we do a Wendy’s review analysis from different social media channels to discover if the brand has found the secret to marketing success the way it has become a legend on Twitter. We aim to see how an AI-driven voice of the customer analysis can show us how different business aspects matter to different customers.

Wendy’s Review Analysis - Why We Chose Wendy’s

Wendy’s has been a household name since 1969 when it was first started. The third-largest fast-food chain in the world, with 14,000+ employees, Wendy’s ensures that its marketing strategy keeps evolving to adapt to a fast-paced, ever-changing marketplace. They continue to maintain their hold on traditional advertising, especially television, even as their social media marketing team has created a strong connection with GenX customers.

Wendy’s Marketing Strategy

A review analysis of Wendy’s shows that its marketing success comes from the fact that the company has never shied away from digital technology and new-age marketing strategies. This approach has helped it not only attract new customers but increase brand loyalty amongst existing customers as well. Their strategy has always been to be flexible and adapt to the trending customer and competitor landscape, and hence it’s no surprise that their pricing mix reflects this ideology. This flexibility comes from their decision to stay as close to the existing market base and generate profits through upsells.

On the social media front, Wendy’s marketing team has opted for the edgy, snarky side, mostly to relate to Generation X customers. They are indeed known for their fun and cheeky online persona while trolling fellow competitors like McDonald’s and Burger King. They are also quick to respond to customers and ensure that any issues are resolved as quickly as possible. They, however, still spend a considerable amount on television advertising because figures show that a major chunk of their customer base is in the age group of 40-55 years.

Given this background, we decided to do a review analysis for Wendy’s across 3 channels - Twitter, YouTube, and Google Reviews. We used Repustate IQ’s customer experience (CX) analytics solution and custom-trained it for Wendy’s to get the results. We wanted to see if Wendy’s popularity on Twitter and their competitive advertising techniques are working out the way they want.

What channels were used to get an overview of Wendy’s consumer sentiment?

In order to get a holistic view of consumer sentiments, we analyzed three specific sources for data:

1. Twitter data mining for #NationalRoastDay
2. Video content analysis for Wendy’s “Wronged by other breakfasts” youtube video
3. Google review analysis for Wendy’s at Toronto Downtown

What Insights Did We Derive From Wendy’s Twitter Hashtag Sentiment Analysis?

Wendy’s is a trailblazer of sorts when it comes to Twitter, what with their impertinent responses and good-humored roasts. They literally invented a holiday on Twitter calling it National Roast Day. Nobody escapes unscathed on National Roast Day when the company roasts as many brands as possible within a span of 24 hours.

National Roast Day is so popular that other brands capitalize on it for brand awareness as well. So before we get into Wendy’s review analysis, here are some of the funniest Wendy’s roasts that will have you in splits.

Wendy’s Is Roasting Everyone to Celebrate National Roast Day 2021 - Thrillist

Here are Sentiment Insights From #NationalRoastDay

To analyze data on Twitter, we went for the obvious choice, #NationalRoastDay. We selected the Restaurant aspect model in Repustate IQ and processed the data for said hashtag. Repustate IQ immediately gave us several in-depth insights on the sentiment analysis dashboard. Below we showcase some of them.

1. Aspects Total Volume

We found that Repustate IQ had identified 8 different aspects in the data and gave a graphical representation as below.

2. Sentiment Overview

It gave the maximum sentiment score of the hashtag across Twitter and the score based on months.

3. Sentiment Trend

Repustate IQ highlights the direction of a sentiment trend. In this case, it shows an upward trend. Sentiment trends are important for marketing teams because they give an indication of how well your brand awareness and marketing campaigns are performing. The solution also tells you the total number of positive, negative, and neutral comments in the total data.

4. Aspect by Sentiment

You can get sentiment based on different aspects from the hashtag data either by percentage or a graph.

Clicking on any of the color-coded areas gives you the data behind the scenes that has lead to the scores. We found that people love National Roast Day, and mentioned the Wendy’s food app in terms of giving feedback.

5. Common Words & Phrases

While conducting the review analysis for the Twitter hashtag #NationalRoastDay, the CX platform picked up all related hashtags and analyzed them. From the screen-grab below you can see that 42 people/brands asked Wendy’s to roast them using the hashtag #Roastme.

What Insights Did We Get From Review Analysis Of Wendy’s Breakfast Video on YouTube?

Insights from video content analysis of Wendy’s “Wronged by other breakfasts” video:

1. Sentiment by Source

When you analyze video data using video content analysis with Repustate IQ, you not only get insights from comments but also from the video itself. Through cutting-edge video AI, Repustate IQ analyzes videos for sentiment as easily as it does text data. This includes tasks such as logo identification, semantic clustering, understanding and extracting information from caption overlays, as well as background imagery and gifs.

In the screen-shot below you see how the Repustate platform identifies sentiment and displays the source of the data.

2. Sentiment Trend

We get to see the sentiment trend from the viral video, which shows that there seemed to be a lot of activity around the time the ad was first released in 2021. There was an upward trend in all three sentiments, but the neutral sentiment showed a peak higher than positive or negative sentiment.

3. Entity by Sentiment

To analyze this phenomenon closer, Repustate IQ gives us a look into entities by sentiment. When we dive into the comments that actually made up the neutral sentiment, we realize that while people loved the food at Wendy’s and generally thought positively of them, yet despite the advertisement, they preferred McDonald’s for breakfast.

Learn more about social media sentiment analysis.

Google Review Analysis - Reviews From Two Wendy’s Locations In Downtown Toronto

We analyzed two Wendy’s locations in downtown Toronto to see what customers are saying. The first thing we noticed was that there was a lot of positive sentiment for Wendy’s in general, and the language break-up that Repustate IQ showed was a testament to the metropolis population.

Sentiment by Language

Now let’s take a look at the two locations specifically for the review analysis - 475 Yonge Street, and 615 Dundas Street E.

Sentiment Score - 475 Yonge Street, Toronto

The sentiment score at this location is positive and consistent, something that all businesses want to achieve.

Sentiment Score - 615 Dundas Street E., Toronto

The sentiment score at this location is mostly positive, showing a 68% score. But it is still lower than the Yonge Street score.

Aspect by Sentiment

Wendy’s Google reviews aspect sentiment breakdown Yonge street, Toronto

Wendy’s Google reviews aspect sentiment breakdown Dundas street, Toronto

On doing a further Wendy’s Google review analysis on what may be leading to a fall in sentiment around experience at Dundas location when compared to Yong street location we made two discoveries:

1. Parking - The main irk that customers had was that the location was great but there was no parking available.

2. Customer Service - Customers noted that there was a delay in service and orders, including the ones made from the mobile app, took a long time to be fulfilled. Perhaps, this could be because of a lack of enough staff at such a busy location?

Sentiment Trend - 475 Yonge Street, Toronto

Repustate IQ analyzed Google review data from 2015 until 2022 and showed the sentiment trend as below. We see that the location had slowly built its reputation and was doing very well in 2018 until the end of 2019, after which there seemed to be a steep decline. Note: When a CX platform shows data like this, it’s a cue for marketing teams to dig deeper into the reasons and find out why this happened.

Sentiment Trend - 615 Dundas Street E., Toronto

Data shows that the sentiment for this location has been having regular peaks from 2016 and then a dip in mid-2018. It kept momentum until 2020 and continued in a slump until mid 2021.

In both these graphs, the common element is how the reviews suddenly fell almost silent in the period post 2019, bearing witness to the loss of business that many brands experienced owing to the Covid19 pandemic lockdowns. As the measures ease, we see more reviews building up - a sign that customers are frequenting both joints again.

Summary

We have just scratched the surface in this article with the kind of review sentiment analysis insights that you can extract from Repustate IQ. A customer experience analytics platform with multilingual capability, search inside video ability, semantic clustering, and a robust named entity recognition (NER) like Repustate’s, gives you a treasure trove of granular brand and product sentiment analysis discoveries once it is trained to your needs. Being AI-driven, the model becomes smarter over time by learning from every iteration of data analysis, and thus keeps increasing in value.

Marketing teams need to leverage on insights such as aspect-co occurrence to see what aspects are mentioned together more often, or analyze keywords and phrases that pop up the most in relation to sentiments like hate, love, etc. Similarly, as the Wendy’s review analysis above shows, it is very important for a brand to ensure that all its customers have the same positive brand experience at all locations. Only then can an engaging social media and brand amplification strategy truly reap its rewards.

Conclusion

Businesses need to analyze customer experience continually and impeccably, to keep a check on sentiment trends over time. Get these and numerous other key insights, quickly and accurately so that you are always in tune with your customers and their experience with your brand.

Whether you’re looking for TikTok insights, or want to analyze news, be a step ahead with Repustate IQ.