Back in 2019, Wendy’s and VMLY&R took in-game advertising to unexpected terrain with the celebrated “Keeping Fortnite Fresh” campaign, which saw an avatar that bore a striking resemblance to the fast feeder’s namesake obliterating all the freezers in the popular battle royale-style video game. The point was to illustrate the brand’s “always fresh, never frozen” mantra in a way that would score in the hearts of the gaming set.

With "Super Wendy's World," the restaurant chain expanded on this idea in manifold ways, infiltrating an array of other titles and streaming the content weekly on its own Twitch channel. A “Street Fighter” version of Wendy, for example, “smashed” competitors such as one red-wigged foe who bore a striking resemblance to Ronald McDonald; in “Minecraft,” her pixelated avatar smashed ice blocks; and in “Animal Crossing,” her character sold her freezers to the lowest bidders. Beyond that, the campaign included new Wendy’s-themed levels in “Super Mario Maker 2” and “Super Smash Brothers.” In total, gamers spent more than 9.8 million minutes exploring the Wendy’s video game universe and downloaded the custom levels more than 988,000 times. The brand amassed a following so large it became the first verified restaurant on Twitch and ranked in the top 1% of all streamers on the platform.

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