Corporations are getting CRUDE on social media as a growth hack... Here's what's happening

This week CTV posted an article questioning whether corporate social media content was chasing edgy trends and getting a tadddd inappropriate. In this episode we talk about where the crude-content trend started, why it "works" so well, and why you, as a small business owner, have a major social media marketing advantage that corporations lack.

We'll also share David Sommer's 3 rules for how towing the line when using comedy in your content (as quoted in CTV), and I'll share one of my own rules for helping my small business clients decipher whether a joke or hot take has gone too far to post or juuuust far enough.

The CTV article mentioned in this episode: https://montreal.ctvnews.ca/provocative-or-crude-do-some-corporate-accounts-go-too-far-on-social-media-1.6941717

Here's the link to the Wendy's Twitter (X) account, also mentioned in this episode.
https://x.com/Wendys?ref_src=twsrc%5Egoogle%7Ctwcamp%5Eserp%7Ctwgr%5Eauthor

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Music by Jordan Wood

Hosted by Jenna Warriner, Creator of Magic Marketing Machine

Transcript

 Wendy's really kicked it off  way back before the tick talk. Before Instagram reels, wendy's showed up on Twitter, raunchy, salty, and ready to make fun of anyone who  replied to a tweet.  

We'd never seen this before at the time, a brand speaking like a human on the internet.

Not just any human. Uh, sassy and hilarious human. I don't know if reading these tweets out loud will transfer. I don't know if they'll be as funny if you hear them, but for instance, someone wants roped to Wendy's on Twitter and said, if the beef has never frozen, then how do you guys keep it fresh? And Wendy's wrote back refrigerator tours. In like all caps with a space between each letter that was in 2017. 

So we're going way back. They also fired shots at any other fast food. So they would make fun of McDonald's if McDonald's ever like. Put out a mistake, tweet Wendy's was on it. It's like they were hovering over their account, just waiting for them to mess up. Or for instance, someone once posted what is subway good at? 

And they wrote underground transportation, just salty stuff like that. . Okay, so that started this whole trend, and now it is very common for brands to take this approach to their social media. We're in a huge rise on it right now. And there was actually a CTV article that came out. I think this morning all about like asking the question, have brands gone too far? 

 The title is provocative recruit to some corporate accounts go too far on social media.  There's a really big trend right now for the voice of the company  beat. Threads or  TikTok or Instagram for the voice  to be this role of a young,  gen Z. Intern who is secretly posting on behalf of the business and almost being  that businesses inner voice. Or possibly that businesses inside voice, like the stuff that, that the staff or the company or that social media manager probably shouldn't be saying out loud, but is saying out loud. 

And then it makes an inside joke with the audience and the audience gets to come on this inside joke. And part of the allure of this is it's different. It's a shock factor and it really personifies the company.  So we always say  , people like to buy from people, right? 

They like to buy from a face, not a logo. So by creating these personas and giving you the inside voice of the company, it's making the accounts actually interesting to follow.

And making them seem a lot more human  one company that does this really well is the calm app. 

 The calm app is massive. This company is worth over $2 billion. They are not small potatoes. 

 Meanwhile on threads, they are jumping on trends all the time. They are typing just like they are a normal kind of funny person.  Calm is a meditation app. All about stress relief, and yet they're full swing. Leaning into humor in their social media. 

Like some of these posts let's look at it. 

These posts all have the energy of.  Like a kind of serene person. They're not. Like Wendy's actually  being crass to people, but it is very human.  We're seeing sentences that start with lowercases and really conversational style humor and daily motivation. 

So just like every trend, sometimes when we swing far one way, we then swing far the other way. 

When a lot of brands got onto social media, it was very corporate, right. Very cold, very icy. And then guess what they found that, that didn't get them very far. And if I can just get up on my soap box for a second. You're probably a business owner if you're listening to this. And I think it's so fascinating. It kind of makes me annoyed. 

Sorry. That business owners come to me. And they're so worried about looking professional. Meanwhile, the biggest brands are trying to look more like you.  You're trying to look corporate and professional. They're trying to look human and personified.



 When you're a service-based business, your face is so valuable. 

Your personality is a marketing asset. And we talk about this all the time in my program, magic marketing machine, like your tastes, your nerdom, your fandom, what your, into you showing up on camera and being authentic and talking to your camera  that is invaluable. 

Big companies need to hire people to do that. They hire athletes and spokespeople to do that because they don't have what you have, which is a personality. And then they're trying to create it in all of these different, unique ways. So we started being super, super corporate and now. Now it's full swing, the other direction, trying to be really  natural and organic and authentic. And now this, uh, this news article comes out asking if it's gone too far and sometimes trends can be a little bit edgy. 

And if a brand jumps on them, like, has that brand gone too far?  That's the big question.



I will also link the article in the show notes. If you're not familiar with CTV, it is a Canadian,  news outlet.  They interviewed Dave Somer. Who's vice president of strategic communications at enterprise Canada. 

And he mentioned these three rules. And I have a history in comedy. I don't know if you know that, but  I was on the improv scene for a long time. And I also worked in a comedy bar in Toronto for a long time as a bartender. And then I moved into doing their social media. 

I blew up their social media by pretending to be a bro on Twitter.  That broey voice that was talking about the Jays and. You know, Um, using  short form hockey slang. That was actually this gal pretending to be them on Twitter. That was my whole thing. Anyway. Dave summer wrote these three rules  some guidelines, for how to not go too far when you're following trends and adding a little bit of sass and they are really similar to just rules you would have in any sort of comedy, whether it's improv or standup or whatever. 

So the first one is don't punch down and in improv land and in second city land, the way that we explain this is you can make fun of anyone who is ahead of you. So. You can make fun of anyone who is like,  What would you say, like socioeconomically ahead of you, but no one who is behind. So anyone who has more privilege than you, you can make fun of, but you can't make fun of anyone who has less privileged than you. Second one, don't try too hard. 

And next one don't be late to trends. 



 That last one. 

I don't know that it's the end of the world, if you're a little bit late to trends, but if you're going to be jumping on this as a strategy, trying to hop on things like this, when they're happening, then. 



There isn't a lot of time to move it down the pipeline there isn't a lot of time for approvals. 

You kind of just need to trust yourself and just throw yourself into it. 

 And your post is more likely to perform well. If people still remember the reference that you're making.

He also says they meaning the audience wants to see people who are communicating in the language of the internet, in the language of the platform, which is so true.



Of course, you want to add your own unique flare, but when you're creating content on any platform, you want to spend some time on that platform and kind of understand how it works and what it's all about. 

And then , Like we say, once you understand the rules, you can start breaking them, but you're not necessarily going to set yourself up for success. If you throw yourself onto a platform without knowing the lay of the land and knowing how that platform actually functions, you want to understand it.  Go with it and then do your own spinoff. And. And get unique.

Explore and experiment and just see how your viewers respond. If this week you make a few posts that are really open, really authentic, really human, and you toss that into your social media strategy. Here's a rule you can take with you to make sure  that you don't go too far. My rule that I have told my clients for a long, long time is don't say anything you're not prepared to defend or apologize for. 

 



For me having a rule like that in my back pocket makes it feel a lot safer to explore and experiment and remember just don't punch down. It's also, it's very easy to be funny without insulting anybody. 

So.

I believe in you.  📍 I know you can do it. I got some really cool episodes coming up. So if you haven't hit subscribe, go ahead and hit subscribe.  Thank you so much to everyone who has already left us a positive review or a five-star rating depending on the platform that you're listening on. 

Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. And I'll see you. in the next episode.