Today when people mention the top companies of the day, names such as Facebook, McDonalds, Tesla, Uber and Yum Brands come up. One company that has been relatively overlooked for the better part of the last century as well as the first decade of this century has been the fast food enterprise known as Arby’s. For a long time Arby’s main specialty was based of the deli meat known as roast beef, it brought the brand to big success from its inception in 1964 but about 15 to 20 years ago, Arby’s was experiencing a slump in sales. This changed with new management and a new, reconditioned menu. Since then Arby’s have averaged over one million dollars of revenue per store and created a new image for themselves and they haven’t even come close to peaking. …show more content…
According to Gladwell a connector is “someone who has an extraordinary knack of making friends and acquaintances”(Gladwell 41) and a salesperson is someone who “has the skills to persuade people when they are unconvinced of what they are hearing”(Gladwell 70). In 2013 Arby’s acquired Paul Brown as their CEO, someone who could be described as both a connector and a salesman. As a salesman, Brown was “tasked him with turning around a 50-year-old fast food franchise that was approaching irrelevancy in its market” (Feloni), he responded with a new advertising campaign and a revamped menu which included new meats such as brisket, corned beef, turkey and pastrami and as a result Arby’s has seen record sales. As a connector, he has made changes which have brought Arby’s to an even broader audience, he helped Roark Capital acquire Buffalo Wild Wings for $2.9 billion dollars, the deal was seen as huge for both companies as it is believed that “Arby's and Buffalo Wild Wings will share best practices with each other, and most importantly, will have access to a variety of shared resources, such as consumer-facing and back-of-house technologies” (Hanbury) according to an Arby’s spokesperson. Brown has also revamped Arby’s advertising campaign by utilizing The Stickiness Factor. Commercials for Arby’s now have the “”We have the meats” catchphrase voiced by Ving Rhames”(Richards) and have utilized close up shots of the meat used to make the message of Arby’s “stick”. Arby’s changes in management and advertising have achieved great success for the brand which has shown no sign of slowing in the near