The Rogue Social Media Manager Is an Advertising Strategy

A new class of social media managers is adopting a vernacular that diverges from the mother tongue of advertising: They’re snarky, making their jobs as corporate employees part of the bit and sometimes criticizing the brands they’re being paid to promote. Consider a few examples that have each been liked and viewed thousands of times across social platforms. In a TikTok for sparkling water brand Spindrift, employees sung a lackluster rendition of Lizzo’s hit song “About Damn Time,” noting, “when you’re a brand so you can’t use the original audio,” referencing how popular music isn’t available to brands on TikTok. The mascots for language learning app Duolingo and sponge brand Scrub Daddy simulated having sex, but they had to create a new version to stay in line with Duolingo’s legal department. "POV: legal wants a non-explicit version," the TikTok's caption read. Vegan chicken nugget brand Simulate is offering a year’s worth of its product for free, with an addendum that the post is “sponsored by the fact that my boss went on vacation.” https://www.tiktok.com/@drinkspindrift/video/7096541583734099242 Brands have been taking on personas since the advent of social media, but what makes the rogue social media manager character new is how brazen they have been, taking swipes at their employers and getting meta by centering themselves in the narrative. Sources said the trend has been spurred by algorithms that reward shock value, a changing social media culture that prizes irony, and digital communities replacing physical ones, forcing brands to find new vectors for word-of-mouth marketing. (A brand persona that consumers naturally like is a good start.) “[The social media manager] is an in-house influencer,” said Renée Richardson Gosline, faculty member at the MIT Sloan School of Management. “The idea that someone is going rogue is provocative and it’s interesting and it’s far more likely to go viral than your traditional advertising appeal.” When done skillfully, the strategy can help a brand achieve the main goal of any social marketing plan: Become a part of culture and raise brand awareness. But in the wrong hands, a hammy brand can come off as cringey and grating, and it can place a brand's entire image on the shoulders of a few employees. Nonetheless, some brands are finding their mojo with the strategy. Simulate's likes-to-follower-ratio on Instagram has increased by 178% since the brand's first post in its ironic social media character persona in September 2020. Spindrift has seen a 2,500% increase in its TikTok community and a more than 1,800% increase in views since it posted its first viral video in August 2021. Duolingo, a pioneer of the genre, has grown from 50,000 followers on TikTok in September 2021 to 4.5 million today. A week after Duolingo posted two of its most viral TikToks—one in which employees applaud the brand's mascot simply for being able to say "bonjour" and another featuring the mascot sulking with the caption "when you use Google translate instead of actually learning a language"—the app saw a 13% and 8% increase in organic new U.S. users, respectively, compared to the previous week. View this post on Instagram A post shared by SIMULATE (@simulate) Departing from traditional advertising Corporate snark is not entirely novel; its origins go back to marketing on social platforms, especially Twitter. Rebecca Finn, cultural insights director at agency We Are Social, traces the style to when fast-food brands, particularly Wendy’s, joined Twitter. Across much of its branding, Wendy’s was represented by a wholesome, pig-tailed girl, but on Twitter, the brand was full of attitude, daring to roast its followers. “How are brands going to post every day if they don’t have a strong personality and brand mascot?” Finn said, noting TikTok is a visual version of this style. Social platforms are designed to be engaging and valuable to their users. One way they can be of value is by serving as a source of shocking content that users can't find elsewhere and are more likely to share with friends, driving even more people to the platform, Richardson Gosline said. Algorithms prize virality, and that forces all accounts, including those operated by brands, to push the envelope in order to gain traction. “When that’s your business model, the types of content that you’re going to see created really err on the side of … being sort of counterintuitive,” said Richardson Gosline. “What’s counterintuitive? A social media manager that’s undermining the brand.” https://www.tiktok.com/@duolingo/video/7089023903682628910?is_copy_url=1&is_from_webapp=v1 A lever to build community An irreverent social media persona can start as a way for a brand to stand out, but regularly posting funny content can also spur consumers to make the brand's account part of their media diet. And once users start looking forward to the brand's next post, the brand has an opportunity to build a genuine connection with its customers, said Zaria Parvez, global social media manager at Duolingo. “I like to think of it as a sitcom," Parvez said. "There are multiple episodes in a season. There are some episodes that are amazing, there are some episodes that are just there to progress the story forward, and there are some episodes that are fan favorites.” For Andrew Watts, brand marketing lead at Simulate, the social media manager persona he’s crafted elicits hundreds of comments and direct messages, which the brand responds to in character, even carrying on lengthy private conversations with fans. “We don’t have canned answers,” Watts said. “We rewrite it in a different way every time.” While an engaged community doesn’t necessarily lead to sales as directly as other, more performance-driven formats, it can become an engine for word-of-mouth marketing. “The point of social is to build a community of people who become your advocates,” Watts said. View this post on Instagram A post shared by SIMULATE (@simulate) A double-edged sword Self-deprecating brand accounts are partly a reflection of the changing culture of social media, which of late has favored authenticity, comedy and photo dumps over choreographed vacation pictures, especially with the rise of TikTok. Plus, the growing awareness of the gap between some brands' images and their actions can make a bit of a tongue-in-cheek approach more welcome. “There may be a little bit of schadenfreude if you see a brand looking foolish. There might be a bit of rejection of the more traditional corporate messages,” Richardson Gosline said, adding, “This strategy of having brands act like they’re your friends is tricky and can very much backfire.” If a customer likes a brand’s account, they're more likely to buy and recommend its products. But often, customers are aware that even the chummiest brand's ultimate goal is to sell to them, and they resent it when a social account seems unaware of their savviness. Brands have so often tried to act like just another quippy social media user and missed the mark that the meme “silence, brand” developed to describe corporate cringe. For that reason, it takes a particularly skilled social media manager to execute an edgy social media presence successfully. “You have to have someone you trust," said Katie McDonald, group strategy director at We Are Social. “They are the therapist, the comedian … [a huge] amount of talent needs to be in one person.” Parvez felt this pressure firsthand when she used the Duolingo TikTok account to make a joke about the contentious Amber Heard-Johnny Depp trial and was called out on social media. She later deleted the post and apologized on Twitter, but the backlash also elicited racist comments and even death threats toward her. Duolingo let Parvez take time off, she said, and was sympathetic that despite running a very successful brand account, she was capable of human error. Given the risks of an edgy approach to brands' reputation, the strategy might be more appropriate for a challenger brand than a legacy advertiser with a large and cautious legal team, McDonald said. But Sue Kim, vp of brand strategy and marketing insights at Spindrift, sees it differently. “You can still be creative with guardrails,” she said. “To be on TikTok is all about these really small moments of fun and joy. Every brand has an opportunity to do that.”

Social Media

Once a Liability, the Rogue Social Media Manager Is Now an Advertising Strategy

Brands like Duolingo, Spindrift and Simulate are getting snarky and breaking the fourth wall on corporate social accounts

Catherine Perloff

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Catherine Perloff