The Twitter War You Never Expected: Fast Food Chains Are Up In Arms About IHOP's Name Change And Cannot Stop Tweeting About it.
If you haven't been living under a rock for the past week, by now you know that IHOP has infamously decided to temporarily rebrand as IHOb --- and for a while, they kept people guessing on what exactly that meant for the pancake chain.
Starting June 4th, they replaced every letter P in their tweets with the letter B, and it seemed like all that had changed was the company hiring someone without a strong grasp on the English language to run their Twitter account. It was hilarious. But more importantly, it stirred interest. Everyone wanted to know why the rebrand was happening--- and what the B stood for.
IHOb? What could it b? #IHOb
— IHOb (@IHOb) June 5, 2018
It didn't take long for the breakfast joint to unveil their new strategy, taking to Twitter on June 11th to drop the bomb. The burger bomb.
Dear Internet, we abbreciate your batience. Now let’s see who guessed right. B-hold!!!!! #IHOb pic.twitter.com/Fh3SkZ7s3Y
— IHOb (@IHOb) June 11, 2018
Bold move, IHOP. Bold move. Now, you may be thrilled that you can finally order a burger at IHOP or you may be one of those weird people who gets inappropriately offended at any amount of change. But that's not the story here.
What we're here for is the reactions from other fast food joints. Here at FML, we're big fans of Twitter beef (no pun intended) between companies. There is nary a thing more hilarious than when two professional companies throw shade at each other on Twitter. And with this IHOP rebrand, that's exactly what we got. It was IHOP vs. Everyone. And it. Was. Hilarious.
Wendy's laid it on thick, but IHOP clapped back:
We don’t want any beef with you, we just want to share our beef with the world
— IHOb (@IHOb) June 11, 2018
Peep that Burger King name change...
sorry, old Burger King can’t come to the phone right now...
— Pancake King (@BurgerKing) June 11, 2018
A&W is that one friend who just wants to join in on the fun but low-key doesn't get the joke...
Inspired by the International House of Burgers announcement, we are also changing our name (Please do not ask what it means — we don’t know either.) pic.twitter.com/0HPQtQirHn
— A&W Restaurants (@awrestaurants) June 11, 2018
Steak 'n Shake coming in hard with the FACTS:
.@IHOb A replica by definition cannot be as good as the original. The original #Steakburger was created by Steak ‘n Shake in 1934.
— Steak 'n Shake (@SteaknShake) June 11, 2018
Chili's protecting their turf with... whatever this gross thing is.
We don't usually throw shade, but seriously? That's what all that was about? Here's a real burger for you. #ChilisBoss #IHOb pic.twitter.com/eTVmtd9vir
— Chili's Grill & Bar (@Chilis) June 11, 2018
Whataburger being reasonable amidst all the craziness:
As much as we love our pancakes, we'd never change our name to Whatapancake
— Whataburger® (@Whataburger) June 11, 2018
White Castle also hopped on board:
We are excited to announce that we will be switching our name to Pancake Castle.
— White Castle (@WhiteCastle) June 11, 2018
Hot Pockets did a lovely job of throwing that shade with a hip hop reference:
bocket like it's hot pic.twitter.com/lwroiI3iVB
— Hot Pockets (@hotpockets) June 11, 2018
And lastly, our personal favorite, Moon Pie who just did not want to give into peer pressure, god damn it!
We've worked really hard for like 100 years to get people to remember our brand name so if it's cool with everyone we're just going to stick with MoonPie thank you
— MoonPie (@MoonPie) June 11, 2018
And there are so, so, so many more. Love the change or hate it, the truth is, the rebrand was successful because people are still talking about it. No such thing as bad press, right?
