Keeping Fortnite Fresh
Read the story- Brand
- Wendy's
- Year
- 2018
- Objective
- Awareness
- Industry
- Food & Drink
- Mechanic
- Arcade & Action
- Platform
- In-Game
- Added
- October 2026
- 1
Players update Fortnite to patch v6.30, where the mode list shows a new Limited Time Mode, Food Fight, tagged '1 wall, 2 entrees': build a base, wait for the barrier to drop, then fight.
- 2
A match splits 24 players into two 12-player teams, one defending Durrr Burger and the other Tomato Town/Pizza Pit, dropped on opposite sides of a map divided by a full-height barrier.
- 3
Each team has a giant mascot head under construction at its base; the objective is to protect it, since a destroyed head ends the match in a loss.
- 4
While the barrier is up, players farm materials and fortify their mascot head, aided by red supply drops of weapons and traps and by boosted harvest and pickup rates that let them build fast.
- 5
When the barrier drops, the fight opens up: players push toward the enemy base and race to demolish the rival mascot head before their own falls.
- 6
Death is temporary — players respawn after 7 seconds with their inventory intact, dropping some ammo and building materials at the death spot; explosives are disabled, so demolition runs on guns and the pickaxe only.
- 7
A parallel entry point exists for viewers: on Wendy's Twitch channel, a character in a Fable skin resembling the brand's mascot ignores the match's actual objective and instead heads straight to Durrr Burger to smash its freezers and tear down the building.
- 8
Viewers chat with the broadcasting brand in real time, driving the channel from zero to about 7,400 followers and roughly 43,500 comments over the nine-plus-hour stream.
- 9
Other players and streamers pick up the same bit, entering Food Fight themselves to smash the burger joint's freezers and post their own clips, turning the stunt into a repeatable piece of user-generated content inside someone else's game.
- 10
The campaign leaves a lasting trace: players who return to Fortnite later find the freezers gone from the burger restaurant, removed by the developers after the campaign.
Objective
Wendy's wanted young fast-food fans (12–24) to know its beef is fresh, never frozen — a fact only 30% of customers could confirm — but that audience skips traditional ads and distrusts brands that show up uninvited in gaming spaces. Rather than buy media inside Fortnite or comment on the game from the sidelines, Wendy's set out to earn a place in the game's culture on its own terms, with a pointed jab at frozen-beef competitors along the way.
Solution
Tune into Wendy's first-ever Twitch stream and you find her signature red-pigtailed mascot dropped into a live Fortnite match, playing Food Fight as an actual combatant rather than a paid cameo. She skips the gunfights and heads straight for Durrr Burger, the rival team's restaurant, methodically smashing every freezer inside since that's where the in-game burger joint keeps its meat frozen. Once the freezers are gone she keeps going, tearing the building itself apart floor by floor while chat watches live. Other streamers and regular players jump in mid-broadcast, hunting down their own freezers to smash and posting the clips. There's no scripted finish — the stream just runs, over nine hours straight, until the last freezer and the restaurant are gone.
- 23M
- campaign impressions
- 250K+
- live twitch viewers
- 1.5M+
- minutes watched on twitch
- +119%
- increase in social mentions
23 million impressions across the campaign; 1.5 million+ minutes watched and 250,000+ live viewers on the Twitch stream; Wendy's Twitch following grew from zero to 7,400; Wendy's social mentions rose 119%; the stream drew roughly 43,500 comments, versus a typical ~3,000 per day on Twitter.
