10 Feb Twitter Feuds: What Happens When Brands Go Head-to-Head
Between all of the interactions that occur on a day-to-day basis, it’s almost inevitable that some brands would end up conversing with others on Twitter. While exchanges between celebrities are generally a heated battle, big brands need to show their humanity through these interactions.
Twitter feuds do occur, but they are not necessarily a negative interaction between companies involved. Some of them do end poorly or are not done as tastefully as you would hope, but these digital fisticuffs can also show the witty personality of the brand, and bring in a lot of retweets and mentions at the same time. Here are several examples of previous brand vs. brand interactions on Twitter.
Nature Valley vs. Honda
While Honda had just begin promoting their HondaVAC, what better way to do so than by targeting the crumbly source of the problem? Nature Valley was able to respond in a witty way, and Honda went about their business targeting several other snack brands as well, including Oreo, Skittles, Cheerios, and Sun Chips. While these tweets did not receive a lot of engagement, their campaign was clever and hit the nail on the head in terms of what the HondaVAC was created for, and the target audience it would be useful to.
Kit Kat vs. Oreo
After a Twitter follower of both @KITKAT and @Oreo mentioned that she enjoyed chocolate so much that she was following both accounts, it’s no surprise that at least one of these historically tongue-in-cheek brands ended up tweeting back. While losing the timeliness factor by responding two days later to @Laura_ellenxx’s tweet, Kit Kat challenged Oreo to a game of tic-tac-toe, where the winner would supposedly win the fan’s affection.
On top of using their own products as the game pieces, there were a lot of positive mentions from fans about the interaction. While this in itself was great, Oreo seemed to take into consideration that a winner/loser situation could end poorly, and both ended the game while paying their competitor a compliment.
Orbitz vs. Priceline
For reference to this beginning tweet, in 2012 Priceline was running a promotional campaign called “Negotiator for President” while at the same time, Orbitz was running a similar campaign called “Vacation Party.” The two Travel-based companies went head to head with a series of tweets and graphics in the beginning of November that same year.
The two companies had both tweet and vacation related images to use against one another. While this head-to-head was definitely against competitive brands, it was also comedic and light-hearted. Even after these tweets, the conversation continued for 7 more and discussed how the Priceline and Orbitz candidates would go against one another in an election, and then both brands mentioned how voting on 11/06 “for realz” was important. Both brands used friendly banter, and responded so promptly it was like watching a tennis match. There was no waiting days for the next response, and it received good feedback through @Mentions as well.
Taco Bell vs. Old Spice
Now here, both brands had the ability to jokingly take a stab at one another, and it was playful because they’re not actually competitors. As far as I know, Old Spice does not sell food, and Taco Bell doesn’t sell hygiene products. Between amusing in this instance and their standardly entertaining brand voices, both of these brands did very well. So well that other brands even wanted to interject in the conversation.
All of these brands showed several things during these interactions. They all tweeted approachably, with well-mannered responses based on the conversation, and were timely to the other brand. Twitter is so in the moment that all of these things are incredibly important, and they portrayed this well.
