In mid-October, writer Savannah Monroe shared a photo of her engagement ring on X (formerly Twitter). But instead of congratulatory messages from her followers, Ms. Monroe was hit with numerous comments from internet strangers who mocked the size of her gemstone. That’s because Amazon Prime Video India’s X account retweeted her photo with a screengrab from the show The Summer I Turned Pretty, in which a character proposes with a comically tiny ring.
The tweet went viral with many other X users taking the joke forward, while others defended Ms. Monroe. The writer described Amazon’s retweet as “inviting harassment in droves.” The company later expressed regret and removed the tweet.
This incident is just one example of how tech brands have transformed their advertising strategy on social media — and how easily things can go wrong.
As more brands join Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram, they start posting like a human user to make themselves more engaging, instead of posting dry, administrative updates about their products and services.
For example, Uber’s official account posted a photo of Norwegian artist Edvard Munch’s painting ‘The Scream’ for Halloween and added a text overlay on Instagram: “Me when my friend hasn’t heard of Uber One yet.” The company also urged users to “ghost” their extra fees, referencing a slang word used while dating.
Are brands taking on a human personality?
This is called brand anthropomorphism — the act of giving human characteristics to a corporate brand. This character lets brands crave junk food, gush over celebrities, celebrate sports wins, cheekily promote their products, appear to express emotions, make fun of their own customers, and even nudge them into taking certain actions.
However, tech companies that have operations ranging across international markets face a unique challenge as they need to market their digital product to people from a variety of cultures and economic backgrounds. This is where a dedicated social media presence with a customised approach for each significant userbase becomes indispensable. Projecting a sense of playfulness is also key as many such brands adopt what they imagine to be the language of viewers in their 20s and 30s, loaded with Gen Z slang and pop culture references.
For example: Netflix, on X, maintains a mainstream Netflix account that promoted the final season of Stranger Things; a Netflix India account that showcased its Hindi language content while claiming to be “simping” for Emraan Hashmi; and a Netflix India South account that referred to Silambarasan TR as its “boyfriend”.
In response to Netflix’s Stranger Things promotion, the official Walmart X account commented, “I never want this world to end,” with a ‘crying face’ emoji.
Amazon too has several India-centric channels on both X and Instagram where it promotes its own offerings, with a mix of corporate and human-like captions.
Why are brands doing this?
The single most important reason is for global brands to connect with their users in a personal way. Spotify, for instance, on October 20, announced on X that lossless audio had come to Premium users. The company also asked users what was the first song they were listening to with lossless audio, in order to drive up engagement. However, Spotify was slammed by users who complained that lossless audio had only come to select countries.
In addition to farming engagement, brands are also looking to be relatable, especially to younger customers who spend more time on their devices.
Microsoft, which maintains a plethora of social media accounts for its offerings, posted on X on October 31: “when your pc fan gets loud for no reason…okay overachiever,” with the ‘wide eyes’ emoji. The account playfully agreed with others who joked about their computer’s fans, but ignored those who blamed Microsoft products and software for their own loud PC fans.
Google’s Gemini account on Instagram posted an AI-generated video of different birth months visualised as scary jack-in-the-box animations in the run-up to Halloween. The ‘birth-month-as-bespoke-content’ format is popular on Instagram and keeps users watching videos for longer until they see the result for their own birth month. Google used this trend to boost its Veo AI video generator, shared the prompts that users could borrow, and even replied to a user in order to reference a famous horror movie franchise.
Several companies use social media to iron down the line separating organic content from advertisements. Instagram now shows sponsored posts, Stories, accounts, and even suggested content — all unsolicited — to its users, making it harder for them to quickly differentiate between posts from friends and posts from companies.
On the flip side, brands use social media to further widen the gap between their charming online reputation and their serious offline lapses.
For example, OpenAI in real life faces a lawsuit over the death of 16-year-old Adam Raine, whose parents claimed that ChatGPT helped their struggling son explore suicide methods. However, the company on Instagram posted a light-hearted Story where it showed ChatGPT’s saucy response to a person’s ex-partner.
Why should a shift in digital ad strategies matter to you?
A well-implemented social media strategy can help a brand better connect with users, convert them into customers, maintain a positive relationship with this userbase, and make its advertisements easier to inject into their viewers’ online worlds and more natural for them to re-share. These branding strategies encourage users to reach out to official social media channels for instant help or answers, instead of calling a customer service line and expecting a human employee to document and resolve an issue.
However, a more unorthodox social media strategy can also backfire at times. One case is Meta’s WhatsApp, which tried to tease users who frequently add the phrase ‘lol’ to the end of their texts. WhatsApp’s post on X instead garnered millions of views as many users questioned whether WhatsApp was spying on their messages. This brought back memories of the company’s negative encounters with international law over its privacy violations.
In the end, Meta repeatedly told users that WhatsApp messages had end-to-end encryption and that its use of the trending phrase “we see you,” was meant in jest.
Naturally, some brands choose to go the other way, lessening their chances of courting controversy. Apple, for example, largely maintains a restrained and mature tone across its social media channels, opting for short photo captions or text that focuses on the post’s formal context, rather than playing around.
Another example is Palantir, which mostly posts about its employees on X and the company’s own accomplishments. The company’s official X account maintains a diplomatic tone that aligns with Palantir’s high-level operations related to U.S. defence and tech dominance; it does not need to pander to everyday users or binge watchers.
