To be fair, the concept of 'food deserts' and their long-term impact only really took off in the late 90s.
And there's lots of 'pig out' restaurants around that have long-time customers and steady business.
These big guys' CEOs are just getting too old and entering their "embarrassing hip dad" stage.
And in trying to be that "hip dad" alienated all their prospective audiences at once.
They should take some pointers from Denny's. Still crap food, but at least their twitter game is on fire.

I think it's more that Millenials are in such an ad-saturated society nothing really stands out for them aside from DIRECT engagement, or, horror of horrors ACTUALLY having good food. The ad industry essentially obsoleted itself by spreading so extensively. Gimmicks just don't fly anymore.
You can find tons of terrible "millenial food joints" around, Starbucks and McDonalds being good first choices to look. They just figured 'the carrot' out before all these other guys. Ads are more for their dads.