Designed For Discomfort: Nutter Butter’s Social Media Presence

Payton Costenbader
Marketing Editor

A successful marketing campaign is one that captures the attention of the intended audience, and positively influences the public’s opinion on the brand. A great advertising campaign can be found between the massive soda brands, Coca-Cola and Pepsi. These companies have been at battle with one another for decades, leaving an impact on household opinions nationwide, but always in good fun. Times have changed and the days of traditional advertising are long gone, so much so that now some companies are outlining entirely different goals in their campaigns. One company that stands out is Nutter Butter owned by Mondelez International.

Nutter Butter’s social media pages are designed for discomfort. Their risky media approach has created conversation on the internet surrounding the brand for over a year and shows no sign of stopping. This approach includes posts on Instagram and TikTok that are increasingly uncomfortable, weird, and overall, nothing that a traditional marketing strategy would include. These deep-fried memes and nightmarish viral videos are a huge success among Millennials, Generation Z and younger, however

those who did not grow up with the internet may not find this humor appealing. The brand relies on the target audience to be those who are interested in current social media trends, anybody who does not share the humor is at risk of being offended or otherwise completely appalled with the company and their social media presence. However, the audience that is accepting is largely amused by the weirdness. Many people have shared that they purchased their first product by the brand in years after finding their social media posts to be so entertaining.

The Nutter Butter Instagram account showed the drastic change from semi-normal internet humor to the jarring posts it shares today on April 1, 2023. Since then, they have been fully committed to the bit and dive further into this odd strategy. The brand’s TikTok account has become a smash hit, some of the more popular videos have gained over 10 million views and the comments are filled with people contributing to the conversation. The Instagram account is nearing 200,000 followers while the platform on TikTok has well exceeded a million followers. Sales have reflected this insane popularity as in June of 2023, two months after the campaign was launched, sales on Amazon were up 190% from the first week of January that same year. The brand continues to captivate audiences with the current posts being just as, if not stranger than when they first began this strategy.

The brand team at Mondelez International is to thank for giving these account managers the creative freedom to bring such a weird, uncomfortable vibe to the advertising campaign that has become an internet sensation. The risk was high, and the campaign hit the perfect audience to be so accepting of this nontraditional path that Nutter Butter decided to take.

Contact Payton at costenpa@shu.edu