Somewhere around 2017, corporate social media accounts collectively decided that being professional was overrated. What followed was an era of brands roasting each other, trolling competitors, and posting content so unhinged that you would swear the intern had seized control. The results have been genuinely hilarious.
Wendy’s: The Undisputed Champion of Corporate Savagery
No conversation about brand Twitter wars can start anywhere other than Wendy’s. The fast food chain’s social media team turned roasting into an art form, starting with their legendary response on National Frozen Food Day when a user challenged them on their ‘fresh, never frozen’ beef claim. Wendy’s clapped back at McDonald’s with surgical precision, pointing out that their competitor’s beef was indeed frozen. The tweet went viral instantly.
When IHOP temporarily rebranded to IHOb (International House of Burgers) in June 2018, Wendy’s responded with a devastatingly simple ‘U OK?’ that racked up hundreds of thousands of likes. Their social team operates with the energy of someone who has absolutely nothing to lose, and the internet loves them for it. By 2019, Wendy’s had essentially created the template for every other brand trying to be funny online.
Did Netflix Really Subtweet Its Own Customers?
Netflix earned a reputation for sharp-tongued tweets that walked the line between relatable and confrontational. One of their most famous posts read ‘Love is sharing a password,’ which aged spectacularly poorly when the company later cracked down on password sharing in 2023. The internet did not let them forget it.
Netflix’s social team mastered the art of commenting on trending topics with just enough snark to go viral without crossing into offensive territory. Their approach influenced an entire generation of brand accounts that tried to replicate the same casual, slightly sarcastic tone. Most failed. Netflix made it look effortless.
Duolingo’s TikTok Owl Has Gone Completely Feral
Duolingo took a different approach to brand personality by turning their green owl mascot into an unhinged menace on TikTok. The account, which has amassed over 6.5 million followers, features the owl doing everything from threatening users who skip their language lessons to thirst-trapping over Dua Lipa. It should not work, and yet it absolutely does.
The genius of Duolingo’s strategy is that they leaned into a joke the internet had already created. Users had been memeing about the owl’s passive-aggressive push notifications for years. Rather than fighting the narrative, Duolingo’s social team embraced it fully and turned the owl into a chaotic content creator. The result is a language learning app with the social media presence of a deranged influencer.
Old Spice vs Taco Bell: The 2012 Beef Nobody Expected
In 2012, Old Spice and Taco Bell got into an unexpected Twitter exchange that delighted the internet. Old Spice had been riding high on their ‘The Man Your Man Could Smell Like’ campaign, and Taco Bell decided to poke the bear. What followed was a back-and-forth of increasingly creative insults between two brands that had absolutely zero competitive overlap.
The exchange worked because it felt genuinely spontaneous. Neither brand had anything to gain from ‘winning’ the beef, which made the whole thing feel more like two witty friends roasting each other at a party. It set the template for cross-brand banter that dozens of companies have tried to replicate since.
Samsung’s Multi-Year Campaign of Mocking Apple
Samsung has built an entire marketing sub-genre around making fun of Apple, particularly after Apple removed the headphone jack from the iPhone 7 in 2016. Samsung ran ads mocking the decision, showing Samsung users casually using their headphone jacks while Apple users struggled with dongles. The irony hit hard when Samsung later removed the headphone jack from its own Galaxy phones.
The ALDI vs Marks and Spencer caterpillar cake saga deserves mention too. When M&S sued ALDI in 2021 over their Cuthbert the Caterpillar cake being too similar to M&S’s Colin the Caterpillar, ALDI’s social team turned the lawsuit into a content goldmine. They posted memes, changed Cuthbert’s name to various alternatives, and rallied other brands to their cause with the hashtag FreeCuthbert. It was a masterclass in turning a legal dispute into a PR win.
When Corporate Attempts at Edginess Backfire Spectacularly
Not every brand’s attempt at social media boldness lands well. Burger King UK tweeted ‘Women belong in the kitchen’ on International Women’s Day 2021, intending to follow up with a thread about female representation in the culinary industry. The initial tweet, stripped of context, went massively viral for all the wrong reasons. They eventually deleted it and apologized, but the damage was done.
MoonPie, the snack brand, built a following with absurdist, oddly philosophical tweets that read like they were written at 3 AM by someone having an existential crisis. Posts about staring at the moon and questioning the nature of existence somehow became endearing content that racked up thousands of engagements. It proves that in the attention economy, the brands willing to be genuinely weird often win the biggest audiences.
Which brand’s social media game do you think is the most entertaining right now? Tell us in the comments!