We’d love you to think we were the only people in the world capable of being funny on behalf of brands on social – especially if it makes you even more likely to hire us to write copy – but truth be told, there are some brands out there who even still manage two impress us, day in day out, with their hilarious tweets and funny Facebook pages.
It’s time to celebrate the heroes of social media marketing – the social media copywriters with a sense of humour (or “sense of humor”, if you’re stateside) so well honed that they’re able to dominate on Twitter and Facebook on behalf of any product or service.
These are the funniest brands on social media.
Our favourite funny brands on social
1 – Innocent Drinks
The social media managers at Innocent rarely miss a beat. Their social media presence is fun, funny and entertaining, their blog posts are packed full of compelling copy, and their marketing strategy is strong. Easily one of the funniest brands around – across each and every social platform.
The funny list is one of our favourite genres of joke (and not just because our hive mind of comedy creatives can write them so well). And it’s the kind of content writing innocent are great at.
Note how this post has nothing at all to do with Innocent’s products. BUT it’s written in their brand tone of voice, and keeps their brand name on users’ feeds, day in, day out, without boring them — so that when they do post product-related content, it reaches maximum eyeballs (and those eyeballs are receptive to it).
TODAY IS GREYER THAN:
1. Koalas
2. Wolves
3. George Clooney's hair
4. An elephant wearing joggers
5. Unbuffed silverware
6. Black and white movies
7. A dolphin convention
8. Gandalf riding a seal
9. A smudged zebra
10. A rainbow through the eyes of a dog— innocent drinks (@innocent) February 24, 2020
Here’s to the jokers at @Innocent — we imagine you’re boosted with vitamins too – keep up the great work!
2 – MoonPie
Their Twitter feed and Facebook posts reads like they’re written by a thirteen year-old who’s simultaneously bored and blessed with an overactive imagination. Weirdness and self-deprecating humour across each and every social network — punctuation, not so much. Maybe they pay them in MoonPies, and it’s the sugar talking? Either way, we’re massively into it, and so are MoonPie’s 301k followers.
Responding to brand mentions is an art form in itself (and a crucial part of social media customer service) and we love what MoonPie did here. The original tweet from Garden & Gun scored *checks notes* shit-all likes on their own social channels, in comparison.
Please stop posting this or I am going to make my own magazine https://t.co/ZwCyHEXmnY
— MoonPie (@MoonPie) January 28, 2020
Go follow @MoonPie for your daily dose of sugar rush oddness. MoonPie MoonPie.
3 – SparkNotes
SparkNotes produces study guides for Shakespeare texts and other classic works of literature. Sounds interesting, but hardly hilarious, right? Their Twitter header looks exactly how you’d expect it to — i.e. even looking at it feels like homework— except they have 260.9k followers.
How in Hades did that happen? Well, pretty much every tweet they put out goes viral. These guys know how to make us laugh in 140 characters or less.
The SparkNotes social media team has cultivated a distinctive comedy style on Twitter — clashing contemporary language and popular Twitter joke formats with knowing references to classic literature.
Their posts are highly shareable because they’re funny, but also because there’s a degree of intellectual pride around being ‘in on it’. Exactly the kind of marketing copy their target audience will respond to.
This brilliant tweet betrays just how much time the SparkNotes social media team spends on Twitter. They’ve perfectly hijacked the ‘folder/sub-folder’ text and emoji based joke format that was doing the rounds, and brought it back to their specialist subject. Think it’s weird and niche? 41.3k people disagree.
Never before have intellectual calls to action been so funny. Maybe they should start writing a study guide for social media managers to swot up on Twitter memes…
📁Shakespeare plays
└📁Characters
└📁Communication skills
└⚠️This folder is empty— SparkNotes (@SparkNotes) January 16, 2020
Follow @SparkNotes to continue this masterclass in funny social media marketing.
4 – Yorkshire Tea
We weren’t aware of Yorkshire Tea’s Twitter Presence until very recently when – in their own words – they had a “rough weekend” online.
The UK’s new chancellor tweeted a picture of himself with a Yorkshire Tea pack that looked so staged it was surely product placement. The internet was awash with twitter users calling them out – and the attacks got pretty vicious. But whoever’s behind the brand’s social media accounts managed to keep their cool.
You can read all about it over in our Case Study article – but right here, in this article, we want to celebrate the golden nuggets of comedy content we found elsewhere on their social media channels, once the kerfuffle had managed to get our attention.
As a great example: so many brands posted half-arsed social media posts attempting to recreate the #DollyPartonChallenge – and it’s fair to say it upset us a little. While not one of their highest performing tweets, YT showed their comedy chops and went the extra mile.
Get you a tea that can do it all. #dollypartonchallenge pic.twitter.com/BiPTDWjz3T
— Yorkshire Tea (@YorkshireTea) January 24, 2020
Comedy comrades on the @YorkshireTea social media marketing team — we salute you!
That’s all for now. If there’s one thing we want you to take away from all this it’s this simple message: paid social can force people to look at your posts – but that doesn’t make them engaging, entertaining or indeed remotely effective.
If you can make your audience laugh, you can make that audience love you – and they’ll seek out your content whether you’re paying for distribution or not.
We’ll keep adding to this list whenever we find more companies worthy of the accolade “Funniest Brands on Social”.
If you’ve spotted one you think we should show some love to – let us know in the comments, drop us a message, or send up smoke signals.
Coming soon: Tesco Mobile, Taco Bell – and a mystery outdoor retailer. We’ll reveal all soon.
