The Rocket Blog

If laughter is the best medicine then these brand social media accounts are chugging it straight from the bottle.

5 Hilarious Brands Turning Laughs into Cash on Social Media


1) GrubHub on Facebook

While a lot of brands are starting to abandon the Facebook ship, online food ordering company GrubHub is using it to their advantage. Creating sharable content is now more important than ever to increase your Facebook reach and that's exactly what GrubHub is doing. 

This company has mastered the art of combining pop-culture references with humor to produce sharable images that are super silly yet still relevant to their industry. Who needs Facebook ads when your audience is willingly sharing your content in between belly laughs?

Sir Racha

Did I laugh out loud at this Orange is the New Snack image a Facebook friend shared the day of the Netflix season two premiere? You bet your Chinese takeout I did. I laughed the whole time I downloaded the app too, which is exactly what GrubHub was aiming for. 

Non-GrubHub user + lols = GrubHub noms all the time. 

Orange is the new snack

2) Tide on Vine

Vine is arguably one of the newest social media platforms in the game. Yet it’s still one of the least popular social media channels brands are utilizing. Six second videos just are not very valuable to most big brands. 

Tide is not one of those brands. In fact, Vine saved the laundry detergent giant $4,000,000 in just one day by responding to Super Bowl commercials with clever Vine videos starring Tide detergent bottles- all in real time.

While their Super Bowl stunt attracted a lot of press, my personal favorite Tide Vine campaign is their Halloween #ScaredStainless series. What’s not to love about impressively produced horror movie recreations featuring bottles of laundry detergent? The answer is nothing. 

Don't even get me started on this brand crossover Vine campaign Tide and Downy did for the 2014 Sochi Winter Olympics. I'll just segue into a rant about how perfect the pun "the Tide that Vines" is. Trust me. 

3) Taco Bell on Twitter

Oh Taco Bell. Somehow you've managed to ooze just as much awesomeness from your Twitter account as you do from your Crunchwrap Supremes. And then you slathered it with delicious nacho cheese.

funny taco bell tweet

Taco Bell knows who they are. They are not trying to be an elite fast food choice. Their menu is pretty plain if you think about it. Yet Taco Bell makes it desirable. They have mastered taking a seemingly bland product and making it interesting. Funny even. There’s a reason Ad Age named the fast food chain 2013’s Marketer of the Year.

Not only does Taco Bell know who they are, but they know who knows who they are too. Millennials. And man do Millennials love Taco Bell. It's a match made in a taco filled heaven. 

Furthermore, not only does Taco Bell know who knows who they are but they know where to find them- on the internet. If Taco Bell is the tortilla and Millennials are the meat then social media is the cheese molding everything together into the quesedilla of every marketer's dreams. 

Taco Bell is not just selling tacos anymore and they know this. They are selling Millennial culture one pop culture reference at a time. With over one million Twitter followers and counting, their social media game is hotter than their Fire Sauce. And it will only get better from here. 

Does my mom know what a “bae” is? Probably not. Does my 19 year old brother? You bet. And he retweeted it. 

Funny Taco Bell Tweet

4) Audi on Snapchat

While you were watching the Superbowl this year, Audi was selling cars every 10 seconds.

Okay not really. But social media isn't always about selling. It's about engaging. And that's exactly what Audi set out to do. 

Audi knew not everyone is into football yet millions of people watch the Superbowl every year. That doesn't mean everyone is paying attention though, especially in this multitasking world we live in. So they joined the distractions.

Using Snapchat, they targeted the apathetic segment of the country sitting around bored with the game and interjected 10 seconds of anything else besides football straight to everyone's favorite multi-tasking tool, the smart phone.  

Audi snapchat campaign

Did Audi's Snapchat campaign sell them cars? Probably not. But it did start a conversation and sometimes that's half the battle.

Audi snapchat tweet

5) Denny's on Tumblr

What happens when you hire someone almost one third your company's age to run your social media accounts? 

This is what happens.

Dennys tumblr page

When I first heard about Denny's Tumblr page, I thought it was an imposter just like the Burlington Coat Factory fake Twitter account. But it's not. It is run and paid for by Denny's itself. And it's glorious. 

Do you like breakfast food? Who doesn't? Do you like GIFs? Of course! Then you should be following Denny's Tumblr right now. 

What started out as a social media experiment run by a millennial to cater to millennials has now grown into a full blown marketing campaign led by the Ewin Penland ad agency. It's literally an entire team job to tweet out bacon puns and shift through feeds of selfies taken at Denny's diners everyday. 

Obviously Denny's is not your grandma's diner anymore nor do they want to be. They want to feed a new generation their delicious $4.99 breakfast platters and do it in a way they'll want to tell all their friends about. That's what makes their Tumblr so valuable- it's a place not only for hilarious GIFs and food haikus but also a place for fans to post their own content as well. Even if it's super weird. 

Denny's Tumblr

Want some more laughs?

You can find 5 More Brands Turning Laughs Into Cash on Social Media here