We knew in order to really make noise around our $5 All Star Value Boxes, we needed a premise that would be impossible to ignore. So, in the wake of the Amazon/Whole Foods Deal, we hatched a conceit that was right on the border line of believability and ridiculousness to get the Twitterverse stirring: we would ask Amazon to acquire Carl’s Jr. Piggybacking off a season of fake news and late-night rants, we took to Twitter to announce our intention. Then, we planned to keep pouring gasoline on the fire to maintain the story’s freshness—constantly re-stating our intention and providing rationale for why this deal was so great for all parties.

Late on a Sunday night, we began a tweetstorm directed towards Amazon, starting with praising their services, morphing into a comparison between their boxes and our boxes, and culminating with us asking Amazon to acquire Carl’s Jr. After our offer, the business and social media communities took notice. As this fever spiked, we demonstrated how valuable acquiring Carl’s Jr. would be for Amazon, releasing a new “Billion Dollar Idea” via Twitter once an hour for 24 hours. After the last idea was released, we invited Amazon to a meeting to sign the papers. We live-streamed the room for this meeting, and 10,000 people tuned in to watch an empty room for an hour. When Amazon didn’t show up, we streamed a 30 minute Keynote on YouTube Live.

In just 72 hours, our efforts garnered over 1 billion earned media impressions, including pieces in major financial news outlets like Fortune, Bloomberg, CNBC Closing Bell, and The Street. The buzz extended into all aspects of national publications, with exposure in the national food, pop culture, consumer, finance, technology, and trade media. But most of all, we proved that with creative storytelling, the Twitter platform can be subverted to make a brand top of mind in a conversation they had no business entering.