How do you do, fellow brands?

 Hello everyone, and welcome to my blog!  I find the way advertising has changed over the years to be very interesting. As many of you know, television usage has been dropping for many years, with people opting to use online entertainment services instead. Where once marketers had plenty of space to push their brands messages out there, it is becoming harder to reach new generations who get on Netflix, binge shows uninterrupted, and use ad blockers. This does not mean that brands couldn't reach young audiences, however. Social media has been on the rise for a while, and many people my age use it every day. This has presented an opportunity for brands to become relevant in the public conversation, in part by emulating our manner of speaking and posting online. What this means is that many brand twitters try to employ self-aware, self-deprecating, or absurd humor that you often see from normal twitter users. 

You may be wondering why I chose the "fellow kids" meme for my blog. The reason is simple: It is the way many in my generation perceives brands trying to cater to us on social media by acting and talking like we do. Simply put, some brands are better than others at generating goodwill online or staying hip. The goal is for your brand to be part of the conversation and in the consumer's mind; maybe when you go to the store, you'll buy Pepsi if you remember their snarky tweets at Coke, or you'll go to Wendy's when you remember their funny memes that left an impression on you. Sometimes trying to blend in does not go to plan and you end up hurting your brand more than helping it, or you tweet something that offends a large portion of your clientele. There is a balance to be struck, and while it may seem easy enough to tweet random drivel or memes to get the "young'uns" to buy your product, it can be quite hard to do properly. 

For the above posts, it is clear that whoever ran the account didn't fully grasp what they needed to do in order to stay relatable. Posting a meme and lazily connecting it to your brand is simply not enough and only makes you look even more out of touch, as can be seen by the low number of likes and retweets despite Ruffles being a very well-known brand, enjoyed by many social media users. Even worse, using a hashtag without realizing it's about abuse survivors makes you seem out of touch and offends a lot of people who see your tweet as making light of a serious and important topic. Regardless of whether big brands stay relatable to millennials and gen z, it is certain that their social media accounts and their manner of speaking will continue, with more and more adopting the strategy as time has gone on. With this blog, I hope to explore some of these brands, their strategies, their successes and their mistakes. 

If you want to read more about brand successes or failures, here's a few pages that I found interesting about the topic:

https://www.wordstream.com/blog/ws/2018/06/29/funniest-twitter-accounts

https://www.inc.com/max-totsky/social-media-fails-2019.html

What do you think about social media marketing and these brands' approaches to it? Let me know in the comments!