Some Companies Just Want To Watch The World Burn. Eat At Arby's
LOL. See what they did there? While many fast food chains, fast casual restaurants and other Food Concepts are responding to both consumer demand and the impending collapse of an earthly ecosystem that can support human life by offering new, or additional, plant-based options, Arby’s zagged.
Not only did the fast-food chain equivalent of The Chainsmokers opt out of offering plant-based alternatives to the meat products it typically serves, it recently made a CARROT out of MEAT. A carrot is a thing that’s ALREADY a vegetable. And Arby’s used something’s flesh (a turkey, apparently) to make a thing that looked like one—a kind of alternative fact rendered in meat. In a further bit of dad-joke caliber trolling, Arby’s promises meat broccoli next.
Why? Why do this?
The company does seem to be finally, fully, manifesting the spirit of its parody Twitter account, Nihilist Arby’s and embracing the infinite, inescapable void as its corporate ethos. But, more to the point, the “marrot” was an attempt by the Arby’s marketing unit to “join the cultural conversation” and generate headlines with a viral ready troll as marketing stunt. Because marketing stunts are already such a gift to our culture and marketing stunts that require the purposeless sacrifice of living beings are simply next level. I’ll take my Cannes Lion now, please!
Whatever drove its creation, the stunt is a fun-loving, grease-covered thumb of the nose at carrots, at turkeys, at humanity, and at the idea that we should maybe be trying to possibly change our habits just a little, for the sake of us all, no matter the species.
So, big, brown hat’s off to Arby’s for fully committing to a gag, and to the earned media that is the desired result of such a gag (yes, like this article. We are all the void). And it’s clear that the company is similarly laser focused on a meat-or-die stance that consolidates its audience base. Some brands are taking controversial and controversial-ish stands today as the battles in the culture wars come to their door. Many of them, like Nike, Patagonia, and Dick’s, have challenged the big tent, offend-nobody tradition of marketing and earned their media by acting on forward-looking, non-unanimous values. It’s fitting that Arby’s stance is more of a Joker-style, watch-the-world-burn jape. They really pwned those cuck vegans, vegetarians, and meat eaters trying to adapt their diets to a changing world, eh?
In case we need to know how to feel about such a thing, Arby’s CEO Rob Lynch tells us: “It is pretty funny.”
Yes. It’s pretty funny.
And if you think a gratuitous meat carrot is funny, here are some really good ones:
That one about the meat industry’s massive contribution to climate change and the scientific consensus that if we don’t reduce our meat consumption, we have zero hope of keeping humanity fed, or even alive long-term, or maybe even short-term? Now THAT is funny.
The fact that antibiotic resistance (I know, already ROFL) is, according to the World Health Organization, “one of the biggest threats to global health, food security, and development today,” that the overuse of antibiotics in the meat industry is contributing to the rise of antibiotic resistance across the world, and that, according to a New York Times piece about the growing threat of drug-resistant salmonella, the pork industry just plain refuses to cooperate with investigations of farming practices? HILARIOUS. (This solid gold bit is made more amusing by Arby’s particularly carefree attitude on the subject. The company consistently receives the lowest possible grade—an F—on an annual NRDC study that rates fast food restaurants’ efforts to reduce antibiotic use. The 2017 study noted that Arby’s was among the chains to “have taken no discernible action to reduce the use of antibiotics in their supply chains.” The company fared no better in the 2018 report, scoring zero points for transparency due to not even responding to the report authors’ request for information. An F! Literal fail! HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!)
The suffering of sentient beings, who have more intelligence and more complex emotional lives than we give them credit for? Dying! I’m deceased! (and get this: “no animals raised on factory farms are kept and killed under worse conditions than turkeys and chickens, which make up most of the animals raised for food in the U.S.”). Comme c’est drôle!
That the private equity company that owns Arby’s and other meat-centric hot spots is literally named after an Ayn Rand character? Stop.
In a recent interview, Arby’s marketing head Jim Taylor (who is also super tickled by the whole thing as he seems to be laughing after every quote in the story) boiled down the recipe for success in “mainstream America,” and by extension, Arby’s calculus for menu decisions, as, simply: “ how does it taste and what does it cost?”
Easy peasy. But viewing the notion of “cost” so narrowly is putting Arby’s in rarer and rarer company these days. More and more, corporations, now the dominant actors in our society, are realizing there are costs and there are costs. They know that responding to consumer demand AND broader societal challenges and responsibilities isn’t just for the “non-mainstream,” veg-head Bens and Jerrys of the world. It’s a core part of being a modern company. Meat monolith Tyson foods has announced its intention to become “a leader in alternative protein.” Even the CEO of BlackRock, the world’s largest investor with $6 trillion under management, has declared that “to prosper over time, every company must not only deliver financial performance, but also show how it makes a positive contribution to society” (what a killjoy).
But, you do you, Arby’s. May as well get the laughs and that sweet earned media while the getting is good. As the less and less satirical-seeming Nihilist Arby’s would say (and has said): “When you consider that nothing matters, checking nutrition facts, being vegan, voting, loving your spouse, getting out of bed each day, it’s all pretty meaningless. Soon the sun will eat the earth and nothing you’ve ever heard of will even exist at all. Eat Arby’s.”
