Enter Jon Stewart and The Daily Show. Pop-culture mentions were few and far between for Arby’s, and when they did occur, it was often at our expense. No place was this more true than during our occasional mentions (or slams might be more appropriate) by Jon Stewart on The Daily Show.

Jon Stewart regularly lambasted Arby’s and made us the punch line to his indigestion and diarrhea humor. We learned that other advertisers had actually threatened to pull advertising over similar stunts. So, on one hand, we were being talked about in pop culture, but on the other hand, it was, shall we say, less than flattering for Arby’s.

This was an opportunity with two clear paths; we could fight it, or we could embrace it. We could pull our ads, or we could play along. We decided to play along.

It all started when Jon Stewart surprisingly announced his upcoming retirement. Concerned for Jon and his career, we reached out to him via Twitter with the tweet “Jon, feel free to reach out to us at careers@arbys.com.”

For our full farewell, we crafted a pair of good-bye ads that aired during the show’s penultimate episode.

We said good-bye first with a 60-second montage of Stewart's best jokes about the brand. The spot featured some of Jon’s greatest Arby’s Daily Show insults backed by the sounds of the Golden Girls' theme song, “Thank You for Being a Friend” sung by Arby’s voice-over talent, Ving Rhames.

The second good-bye spot, “Arby’s Last Sandwich,” introduced an homage sandwich on Arby’s menu–corned beef with mustard on marbled rye (Jon’s favorite deli sandwich).

The two custom spots were created to air only once, during the second-to-last episode.

In the end, we won by trying not to win. We created a modern branded content experience by simply being good sports.

The social results were staggering:

• 10,000 Twitter mentions, resulting in 300MM Impressions

• Arby’s was the Top Trending Topic on Facebook (organically!) for 8/6/2015, the day after the episode

• 51MM Impressions of Earned Media, and 330 Media Placement

Sentiment was overwhelmingly positive:

• Jillian Louis Facebook post: “You win. I haven’t been to Arby’s in two years. Guess I will be going this week. Any company that has this level of sense of humor gets my $$.”

• Twitter user @1FighingIrish: “Hats off to @Arbys (see what I did there…) Not many brands are this brave or self-depricating. Bravo chaps.”

And, it sold sandwiches:

. Sales were up 16.7% during the last week of August, compared to previous August weeks

. August 2015 sales were up 10.3% compared to August 2014