Is brand banter online the new hot engagement metric?

When Zomato and Blinkit bantered with “Doodh mangoge, doodh denge; Kheer mangoge, kheer denge” on their billboards in Delhi NCR back in 2023, several brands suffered a case of the fear of missing out (FOMO) and promptly waded into the conversation. 

A year later, Zepto and Shaadi.com's billboard quips in Delhi—about the 10-minute delivery of Manyavar’s clothing and the time it takes to find a groom—offered acute insight. The FOMO had evolved into an important engagement metric for marketers, evident in the growing number of brands inserting themselves into the banter.

Brands talking to each other is not a new phenomenon. For instance, American quick-service restaurant Wendy’s in 2018 launched the annual National Roast Day where it roasts brands and consumers alike on X (then Twitter); it’s a huge hit. Back home, the likes of Bumble, Tinder, Prime Video, Myntra, and Netflix have spoken to each other a lot on social media.

However, what is new is how the fate of these two very real outdoor campaigns was decided on social media platforms such as LinkedIn, Instagram, and Twitter. After all, it’s easy to pull off and dirt cheap: take in the banter between two brands, figure out how your brand can fit into it, edit your brand’s voice into the conversation, and ride the wave of engagement generated by the original banter.

“I like banter, but organic banter. What I feel about banter these days is that it's manufactured,” says Nikhil Narayanan, creative head and brand director, Zlade, a personal care brand. He finds it “super ironic” that brands are inserting themselves into conversations not relevant to them. 

“When Zepto and Shaadi.com’s brand head did a collab, 20 other brands jumped in, but how many of them do you remember? Barring one, maybe none. Then what is the point of this? Apart from their internal team saying that we also did something."

Nikhil Narayanan

From the bird to the gram to the link 

Seeing the evolution of brand banter and memes in general through various social media platforms is fascinating. “Once there is too much of a saturation of one kind of thing on one platform, the same thing will start happening on another channel,” states Viren Noronha, co-founder, The New Thing, a social media agency that has worked with Tinder, Flipkart, and Myntra, among other brands.

“I would encourage you to go to the comment section on such posts, and you'll see people call it out, ‘Hey, this must be part of some campaign,’ or they write paneer posting, or ‘Aaj admin paneer khayega.’”

Viren Noronha

He harks to meme marketing posts replete on Twitter, which then move to Instagram in the form of brand collaborations. “Now collab posts have become the bread and butter of everyone's content, so LinkedIn is where brands have now shifted,” remarks the co-founder.

Noronha, surprisingly, believes this trend is on its way out from LinkedIn because people have become wiser to so-called “LinkedIn influencers” and how they subtly promote something or someone. “I would encourage you to go to the comment section on such posts, and you'll see people call it out, ‘Hey, this must be part of some campaign,’ or they write paneer posting, or ‘Aaj admin paneer khayega.’”

However, shouldn't LinkedIn outperform other social media platforms due to the presence of prominent CEOs and CMOs.  “If the CMO of Flipkart is talking about something it has done, it seems authentic, as opposed to some random SVP of some company that has nothing to do with this campaign suddenly coming out and being such an advocate of this campaign,” quips Noronha. 

What were you thinking? 

It is interesting to sit back and try to understand why a company or a brand having nothing to do with two brands speaking to each other decides to express its opinion. Yes, the allure of likes and shares and engagements is there, but somewhere, in the recesses of one mind, it does not feel right.

“Their social strategy seems to be, ‘Let's wait for someone to crack an idea, and let's piggyback on that,’” states Zlade’s Narayanan, adding that “being dependent on someone else’s creativity is parasite behaviour.”

When asked if such a strategy is relevant for young brands who don’t have the capital to invest in mainstream ads or even performance marketing, he disagrees.

“When Zepto's and Shaadi.com’s brand heads did a collab, 20 other brands jumped in, but how many of them do you remember? Barring one, maybe none. Then what is the point of this? Apart from their internal team saying that we also did something,” he wonders. 

On the other hand, Noronha feels jumping on the moment has become an integral part of any sort of social strategy, regardless of what channel it's happening on. The only caveat is one’s jumping into the conversation should add to it and not divert it in a way where it feels forced. “It is where I think the bulk of 70% to 80% of how brands join a conversation.”

Also Read: Is Zomato a copywriter's new copy chief?

How does he measure the engagement of such activities? “Earned media is the answer to whether it has worked or not; whether trade media portals have picked it up,” he answers but admits that the industry has spoilt itself to look at earned media mentions as markers of success regardless of the number of likes and shares the post has garnered. 

What’s next?

For Narayanan, the issue lies with the brands’ internal teams led mostly by folks with no creative experience. “They don’t have much experience, and their advertising school is Zomato, and they are out of their depth.” 
He calls for good creative people from agencies heading the creative teams of brands, and “only then will a brand's creative journey across any platform be smooth.”