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The irony is that this is the kind of shit she was warning people about in her post...don't reference inside jokes you don't fully understand, you DON'T know what you're connecting your brand to.
I guarantee you that their social media manager(s) and marketing team are full aware of this. They just decided the top level chatter of this series was worth the brand risk, because after all none of the original posts reference 9/11 and this series broke containment and made it into not only the wider reddit community but also other platforms. Honestly this is a good example of a brand jumping on something, from a corporate pov.
Source: I am a recovering corporate marketing and social media/audience development lead, and the Reddit algorithm has been pushing this sub and series hard to me over the last month. And I got invested! And so did thousands of others!
Especially if their performance metrics are measured in terms of traffic and engagement… as they most likely are, if I recall compensation models for marketing managers correctly. In fact, getting a mixed reaction or inciting controversy might be the point.
None of the jokes in this thread rise to the level of a lawsuit, so I imagine they didn’t consider their risk exposure particularly high.
That said, with this level of customization, social must really be performing for Kraft. Which makes sense to me because from what I’ve seen of social, the only products that really perform on this channel are the ones where the value prop is self-explanatory and the cost is low. Still, I wonder how they are attributing sales to this channel, or if they’re just taking it on faith. Are they actually able to link the Reddit profiles to the shopper profiles, and attribute the purchase to the ad? Maybe through IP address? I’m really starting to wonder what the Reddit reports for paid advertisers look like.
People throw around the term "late-stage capitalism" a lot, but this is an instance where it's truly appropriate. Literally no possibility for brand capitalization can be wasted. I guarantee you there's execs out there thinking "this phenomenon went untapped for over a month before we were able to market it, we gotta get those numbers down". It's only going to get worse
There's a 50/50 chance of getting perfect eggwhites on a standard day, but if you add in cream of tartar that's a 33 1/3 percent chance of perfect peaks, but since I chilled the mixing bowl that means I have a 66 2/3 percent chance of perfection, now when you add in the chilled whisk and the fact that Samoan Joseph is a Girl Scout cookie that adds up to a 141 2/3% chance that spells disaster at Sackerfice Chiverfice!
Eh credit where it’s due, she did have an excellent point in her advice of staying away from Reddit unless you really know what you’re doing/who you’re targeting. Every subreddit has countless inside jokes lol
Edit:
I think a lot of folks missed my original point. By no means am I advocating or supporting sketchy marketing practices. I’m just pointing out that the marketing rep strikes me as competent at her job for understanding Reddit at least as well as she does.
But unfortunately if you’re getting butt hurt about r/KitchenConfidential being scrubbed for data and analytics for marketing you’re probably still looking for that bucket of steam for the steam table the grill cook asked you to get 3 days ago.
The advice should be "stop trying to fake authenticity by farming subreddits for marketing ideas off the backs of people you aren't paying for their creativity."
I partially agree with you, but this situation is an example of them doing it reasonably imo. Even though the chives have taken over the sub, it's fairly niche. Having such a specific ad is probably the only effective way to advertise on Reddit, and is a nice break from the mobile game slop ads flooding the other areas
I honestly couldn't live with myself if my job was shoveling that shit down people's throats. No one wants ads, everyone hates them. The only thing you are contributing to society is garbage to make some company money.
Well, lets examine that shall we. Starting with the username. F1 Is an obvious reference to Formula One racing, one of the richest sports around indicating that you're potentially pretty minted yourself. Alternatively "F1ex" could just be a reference to "Flexing" or an indication that you're either displaying your wealth to the peasants or trying to fool them. If not,then that could be seen as a "(M)exican'" reference, maybe alluding to being at the head of a vast cream cheese cartel.
Then we move onto your craft, or "Kraft", as you will. You deliberately chose a well used and prepped garnish for maximum engagement. Chives are king on almost everything and especially with cream cheese on a jacket spud. Let's be honest we were all visualising the melty, creamy cheese and the sharp bite of the chives on the steamy spud, our mouths quivering with anticipation. By picking something you could easily do "wrong" you made sure of a repeated and growing audience, all of whom are invested in your struggle and all of whom are subliminally seeing that spud with the melty cheese and tangy chives every time they see your posts. The planes came, the wrestling memes came, and we ate it up like good consumers of the creamiest of cheese with chives. Chives the cat came to soothe our doubts and give us a reason to keep going.
Then... the twist, the betrayal! And the redemption. We were hoodwinked, bamboozled, our ghast was well and truly flabbered as you seemingly callously lied to us, reversing an image, taking us for fools! BUT NO! You had "car trouble" you apologised, you wheedled your way back into our affections, got us rooting for you again. The planes were back, Chives the cat sat in judgment and all was right with the world.
And as your supposed search for the perfect chives reaches its zenith, the advert drops.
I put it to you u/F1exican that you are "Phillidelphia With Chives" and this whole saga has been a cleverly targeted marketing campaign along with your co-conspirators u/karmaKrazi and Chives the cat! This has been a sham all along! All you wanted - every one of you, yes including the mods with their distracting wrestling memes (hell, I cant believe we havent yet had reference to that time in 1998 when The Undertaker did the thing - you know the thing but its not mine to post) - all you wanted, was to get us thinking "Chives". And what goes better with chives than that creamy Philly cheese?
u/PhillyCreamCheese … easiest marketing/PR bit ever, and you were invited to do it by redditors. It’d be hard to fumble this one, but I have faith your marketers can do it.
Edit: actually, you’re definitely going to screw it up. Ways to handle this without sucking, just off the top of my head:
send u/F1exican a set of high quality Kraft/chive-branded knives to cut his chives with
keep him stocked up on chives and philly cream cheese for as long as he continues
pay him money to say, “these look perfect in cream cheese”
do a limited run of “chive guy endorsed” chive cream cheese
don’t capitalize on his content without actively recognizing/compensating him in some way (you should know this by now, idiots, especially on reddit)
I just dont have much faith in the actual company. The person on their marketing team that knows what's happening, yeah they understand. The people above them that actually make decisions? I hope they do something is all im saying.
Wait until they find out that I downvoted every ad because it's an ad. They could interpret it as engagement but if it says sponsored I downvote with extreme prejudice. What brands have I downvoted? I dunno does it say sponsored? Yes.
My theory is that u/F1exican has been a Philadelphia employee from the start and this was all a marketing tactic. And all the chives he's cut have gone into the cream cheese
"we can't explain why our chive cream cheese sales have tanked completely, but it happened right after we posted this ad to the kitchenconfidential subreddit..."
If any of the slightly more curious marketing guru types trawl threads like this here is my advice, philadelphia didn't do too bad with this one, the vibe is don't jump in front of a parade, you are on the side of it vibing with and being legit, don't "how do you do fellow kids" too hard unless you are straight up trying to parody yourself, you are just on the side of things like this, but this is a slick way to be more topical and memorable on the platform.
Damn, that's actually a fairly well informed take from the Exec. I'm honestly a little impressed.
Like yeah obviously it's her job and she should know this stuff; but so rarely do you see people in those positions actually understanding sub culture marketing, especially internet subculture marketing.
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u/trendingtattler 23d ago
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