Ruthless, savage and sarcastic are usually the last things that come to mind when companies set out to plan their marketing strategies. However, as many Malaysians can attest to, we love our food hot and spicy and when the vast majority of companies are out there trying to play nice with customers, there are the daring few that challenge social conventions and say it like how it is.
While ultimately risky and polarising, when they work, these spicy marketing strategies will undoubtedly generate a huge amount of buzz and hype as the huge swaths of internet meme lords and social media junkies rush to share the news along with the hashtags #savage and #nochill which we all know at the end of the day leads to a marketing win.
I mean, knowing that there’s no such thing as bad publicity, here are 4 marketing campaigns for brands and companies that dare to be rude with huge success.
COKE VS PEPSI
The classic head to head as old as time itself, the Coca Cola company has been at loggerheads with Pepsi given both their core products are so similar in taste that the vast majority of people can’t really tell the difference, even if they would say otherwise.
Through the years of trading blows with one another, both companies have come up with some deservingly eye-catching and laugh out loud advertisements in attempts to hype themselves up while bringing the other down.
Whether you are team red or blue, at the end of the day, it’s always entertaining to see what they come up with next to slander the competition.
DBRAND
Source 2 – DBrand
Need a good laugh? Then maybe you should check out DBrand’s website. Primarily a company that designs skins for different high-end electronics like your iPhones and Playstations, the company has decided to introduce some spiciness into their website by almost mocking the companies and audiences that buy said high-end tech products.
Recently, the company got into a spat with animal rights group PETA on Twitter which accused the company of making leather phone cases that lead to the slaughter of cows. Rather than outright denying or defending themselves, DBrand instead wore the accusation proudly like a badge of honour, going so far as to let everyone know on their awesome website itself.
Source 3 – Reddit
Knowing the Internet’s love for a good fight, it wasn’t long before everyone was sharing and retweeting about DBrand’s latest savagery which obviously leads to greater brand awareness for the company.
Source 4 – DBrand
WENDY’S
Back to realm of Twitter, one of fast food chain Wendy’s biggest marketing and public relations wins in recent years was when they hired someone new to handle and manage their Twitter account. Rather than playing nice and promoting their newest burgers, the @Wendys Twitter handle became notorious for dishing out verbal roasts to competitors and even their own potential customers.
Source 5 – Bored Panda
Not satisfied with roasting the competition, many users on the platform have also challenged Wendy’s to serve some witty verbal abuse to them, with probably thousands of request tweets directed towards the company a day with the words “Roast me”. Not wanting to disappoint, some lucky few have gotten what they asked for from the fast food chain with hilarious effect.
Source 6 – Bored Panda
Say what you want but at the end of the day, most brands and companies out there will kill for that kind of audience engagement.
SAMSUNG INGENIUS
For a lot of android fans, a proper bashing of Apple always feels warranted due to the many restrictions of the device which we won’t go into here. However, several years back, Samsung released their Ingenious Ads which showed an Apple Store customer failing to express to customers how Apple’s iPhone X was better than the android alternatives.
While the series of videos had some tiny sprinklings of how the Samsung Galaxy phones were superior, the bulk of the content was geared towards showing how incompetent Apple’s iPhones were in comparison which leads to quite a few laughs and even more shares and social media platforms.
Unfortunately, the ads were pulled and deleted by Samsung and removed from all the company’s official channels but with roast this good, the Internet always finds a way to make sure everyone remembers.
FEEL THE BURN
With most companies playing it safe and churning out vanilla marketing campaigns to appease the largest group of people, it sometimes pays to show a healthy dose of spiciness to stand out from what feels like a soulless group of crowd pleasers.
Fundamentally, advertisements are all about catching attention and raising product awareness in the long term. And when can be done by a few entertaining burns on behalf of some competitors and potential customers which we hope can laugh at themselves, all the better.
For that, we commend these brands and companies for just putting their foot down and saying it like it is. Thought of any other spicy, savage or ruthless marketing campaigns that you think we missed out. Well, I bet you couldn’t and even if you did, you wouldn’t have the guts to let us know, wouldn’t you?
