Social Rocket
Five Guys no longer wants to rely solely on its strong word of mouth. The burger chain has appointed Mirimar as Creative Agency of Record and, according to ADWEEK, is planning a marketing strategy that focuses much more on social media and brand storytelling.
The change is notable for Five Guys. The brand has grown over decades with comparatively little conventional advertising, relying heavily on the product, its locations and recommendations. Now the existing fan community is meant to become a stronger starting point for campaigns and social content.
Five Guys puts more emphasis on social
ADWEEK reports that Mirimar will initially take on the creative work for North America. An expansion to other markets is planned. In August, Five Guys also selected Canvas Worldwide as its new media agency.
Chief Commercial Officer Navin Sharma explains the move by saying the brand now wants to tell its story to a larger audience and reach additional customers. Future campaigns and social work are to build specifically on the already existing, particularly loyal fan base.
This is less a complete change of strategy than an extension: Five Guys wants to translate its existing strength – organic awareness and fans – into more plannable content. For the German market, the development is at least relevant in the longer term: Five Guys has been present in Germany since 2018, while the new creative partnership starts initially in North America.
A similar pattern can currently be seen at other brands as well. Bonobos, for example, is structuring its autumn campaign as a recurring social series rather than individual campaign clips. Starbucks, in turn, has recently deliberately combined the Pumpkin Spice Latte with social-first videos and UGC.
The social strategy has early precursors
Five Guys isn't starting from scratch, however. For the chain's 40 birthday, a social media campaign already ran in February via the official channels on Facebook, Instagram, TikTok and LinkedIn. Five Guys itself now speaks of almost 2.000 restaurants across five continents.
An even more interesting project is a second one: together with Words + Pictures and Lost Tribe Creative, the brand is producing a human-interest docuseries about the Five Guys Games. The series follows employees on their way to the internal competition, in which eight finalists compete for prize money of up to 100.000 US dollars. According to Five Guys, the series is set to premiere in the autumn of 2026.
This turns an internal brand event into a proper entertainment format. This kind of repeatable content is particularly interesting for social, because not every release needs a new campaign idea. Characters, competition and continuation already provide a serial structure.
We also explain how brands can generally build such formats in our guide to episodic social content and video series.
Why fans can become a content advantage for Five Guys
For many brands, social marketing begins with the question of how to build attention in the first place. Five Guys has the reverse problem: attention and brand fans are already there, but until now they have been comparatively little used as a continuous content system.
That makes the move interesting. A loyal community can serve several purposes at once: it supplies stories and reactions, amplifies organic reach and creates an environment in which brand content needs to feel less like classic advertising.
The decisive point is not to treat fans merely as a reach channel. If a brand simply turns its community into ad motifs, it loses exactly the credibility it wants to benefit from. The model works better when real rituals, employees, products and recurring formats form the basis.
The planned Five Guys docuseries therefore fits the new direction well: it tells not only about the product, but about people and an existing internal culture.
Social content does not replace the brand
Five Guys also shows that being social-first doesn't have to mean jumping on every trend. The brand has built a very clear identity over four decades. The new task is rather to translate that identity into formats that work regularly on social.
For marketing teams, this is a useful distinction: social shouldn't necessarily dictate brand strategy. It can translate the existing brand strategy into repeatable content.
Media companies are also now trying to turn social video into recurring formats rather than single clips. The Daily Mail, for example, wants to expand its own social video franchises into a significantly larger advertising business by 2027.
Whether Five Guys will quickly develop a major campaign from this with Mirimar is still open. What is clear, though, is that a brand that has deliberately advertised little for a long time is now investing more heavily in social, entertainment and plannable storytelling. That is exactly why the move is more interesting than an ordinary agency announcement.