Anyone who works in brand social media can tell you that it’s super-fun and easy all the time HAHAHA no, sometimes it’s super-fun and sometimes it’s a desperate slog for relevance. Sometimes you hit it out of the park (how did you even, Oreo?), and sometimes you knock a foul ball into the stands (examples of which aren’t even significant enough to be of note).
The opportunity to piggyback on a bigger brand’s social media efforts, however, is a… fastball right down the middle? I’m running out of baseball metaphors. The point is that it can be a good opening, and when it appears, social media people can get a little… let’s say self-indulgent in the area of brand-on-brand engagement. They cut loose. They have a little more fun. And the general social media audience seems to get a kick out of it, so while I can’t say whether or not it’s helpful from a brand standpoint, it’s at least a nice break from the usual promotional stuff.
Here are just a few times brands have gotten into it on Twitter.
Weetabix pile-on
No question: Weetabix started it by suggesting that baked beans on Weetabix is an acceptable breakfast and not a torture meal from an alternate nightmare universe. But to Weetabix’s credit, they took it like a champ when brand Twitter started (rightfully) piling on like the 2004 Yankees. (Look, I found another one!)
KFC UK & Ireland weighed in, as did Specsavers, but it was contributions by accounts like the NHS and even the GCHQ that drove home precisely what an atrocity that quote-breakfast-unquote really was. And amid it all, Weetabix held its own. You go, Weetabix.
A kinder, gentler Wendy’s
I recognize that it’s hardly novel to bring up Wendy’s’s hilarious Twitter account. But I did want to point out how the brand has eased up of late on its famously scathing snark. The onetime brand-Twitter mean girl still isn’t afraid to poke fun at (or straight-up dunk on) commenters, but it no longer wanders into that relentlessly negative territory like that friend you have who’s usually entertainingly snarky except for those rare occasions when they’re Yes, we get it, you’re snarky. You’re too cool for it. We get it. It mostly dunks now only when dunked on, and the gentler tone remains a general hoot. Unlike this classic.
Owie.
But this post isn’t about brand-on-customer — it’s about brand-on-brand, and while Wendy’s has become less likely to start shit, they remain happy to finish it.
On Wendy’s self-created National Roast Day, of course, the brands under attack are literally asking for it.
Show me the lie.
Netflix goes INAPPROPRIATE
Was it on-brand for Netflix to go racy with its otherwise relatively staid Twitter account? Yes? No? Who cares? We’ll go with “who cares,” because it was a fun tweet with fun responses. If anyone went full-on INAPPROPRIATE, it would be the brands that engaged with it, some of which I can’t even quote here for fear of getting some super-weird search results.
Petco, no. No, Petco. CRATE.
We won’t even go into what Kettle Chips had to say.
Try-hard Twitter
Any time a brand makes a concerted effort to make something go viral, it faces the risk of trying-too-hard, and that goes double when its mission is to be on-brand but snarky in a brand-on-brand competition for Twitter visibility. You win some, you lose some. (You come up with some terrifying ones, what the eff, Kettle Chips?) And as with anything comedic, analyzing it is a surefire way to make even the funniest tweet unfunny. So you’re welcome for me ruining all of this stuff completely.
Some of it’s perfect, though, and I love it and will love it forever.
You’re doing a great job, MoonPie.