By leaning into vulnerability, brands can create authentic marketing messages that resonate with consumers and break through the clutter.
Most marketing campaigns seek to showcase their products in the most positive light possible. There is a strong tendency to create “safe” campaigns that tout a product’s features and benefits, and the customer problems it solves.
On an individual basis, this makes sense: educate your customer on why the product or service is a good fit for their needs often leads to sales. But collectively, such marketing messages often get lost in a “sea of sameness.” It may be counterintuitive, but sometimes leaning into a weakness can resonate positively with consumers and build equity for the brand.
“There’s no such thing as bad publicity.” – P.T. Barnum
Whether it’s proactively responding to a crisis, or simply showing cheeky humility, campaigns expressing vulnerability often break through the clutter. In a world increasingly driven by finely-tuned algorithms, consumers reward such messages because they connect on an emotional, human level.
The following buzz-worthy campaigns demonstrate the power of leaning into mistakes, mishaps and awkward situations.
KFC: We FCKed up
In early 2018 —before Covid-19 illuminated the fragility of a global supply-chain—KFC was forced to close more than half of its stores in the UK due to delivery issues. The world’s most popular chicken restaurant literally ran out of chicken.
“It’s not what happens to you, but how you respond that matters.” – Epictetus
In a refreshing acknowledgment of the company’s blunder, KFC placed full page ads in the UK’s Metro and The Sun newspapers. The ads cleverly rearranging the letters on an empty chicken bucket to spell FCK, along with straightforward apology that began with “We’re sorry.”
The campaign went viral and reportedly spawned over 700 press articles and over 200 million social media impressions. Importantly, according to the YouGov BrandIndex, the campaign was so successful that consumer sentiment surpassed pre-crisis levels.
Coors Lights Out
When Los Angeles Angels superstar Shohei Ohtani smashed a foul ball into a Coors Light billboard —breaking an LED panel in the process— the marketing team at Coors Light wasted no time in turning the mishap into a home run campaign.
Coors Light’s agency Rethink responded quickly on X with a post that generated over 1 million views, 7,000 likes, and nearly 1,500 reposts.
The brand further capitalized on the incident through a fully integrated campaign complete with billboards, modified screens inside Angel Stadium, and limited-edition packaging that sold out within 48 hours. Whats more, they continued the momentum with a “case study” that also garnered tens of thousands of impressions. The campaign won several awards, including a Clio Grand award for best out-of-home advertising.
Strava: Dark Mode
Facing a crisis head-on and responding quickly to unusual events may seem straightforward, even if challenging to execute.
But what if there is no immediate crisis or event to respond to?
It’s also possible to lean into a perceived weakness simply by listening to your customers. Customer Service call logs, discussion groups, and other user feedback can provide ample opportunity to turn a negative into a positive.
For years, Dark Mode has been one of the most-requested features, in the Strava Community Hub, on Reddit, and it even prompted an open-source workaround project on Github.
When the company finally rolled out the feature, it did so in an unexpected way.
What made the campaign stand out was Strava’s acknowledgement of the long-standing issue and the company’s slow response. Rather than simply rolling out the feature as part of a “major update,” the company released a video of its CEO reading negative customer feedback from impassioned users. The cringy video, which received over 35,000 likes on Instagram, worked brilliantly to show the company is listening to its users while also building excitement for the forthcoming update.
The company got a bit of extra mileage from the Dark Mode campaign with its cheeky update message a week later.
Strava is poised to continue leveraging perceived weaknesses in unexpected ways. For example, the company is employing machine learning to identify and weed out leaderboard cheaters – a source of frustration for many users of social fitness apps. It’s not difficult to see how the company could acknowledge this long-standing problem and turn a long-standing weakness into a strength vis-a-vis competitive products such as Nike Run Club.
Surreal: The power of three
As UK cereal brand Surreal demonstrates, it’s also possible to manufacture awkwardness. Surreal has cultivated a brand persona around self-deprecating awkwardness.
A recent post on LinkedIn drives home two key points (high protein, low sugar) while gently poking fun at marketers that insist on three benefits (“Can’t remember but we definitely have three”). Although not as viral as some other campaigns, the post generated over 2,000 engagements. Surreal continued the joke with an in-aisle banner that includes “third selling point.”
As SocialChain points out, the tone of Surreal’s brand personality fits well with “generation imperfection,” since Gen Z consumers prefer candor and transparency over perfection.
“Freeing yourself from the idea that your brand TOV should always be positive will make for a more complex, human brand persona.” – John Thornton, Sr. Creative at Surreal (via: socialchain.com)
Jackbox: So bad it might be genius
Party game publisher Jackbox Games employed a similar tactic when sending an email with the subject heading “TEST EMAIL DO NOT SEND.”
The body of email includes several other “blunders” such as “placeholder!” and “sale button goes here.”
The email is noteworthy in how terrible it is. As Boston University’s marketing professor Seth Cargiuolo noted, “If you clicked on it (even just out of curiosity), talked about it, shared it, started a conversation that included their brand name…. mission 100% accomplished.”
Stay human
The common thread in each of these campaigns is a willingness to express vulnerability —a very human and relatable emotion. In a desire to optimize every communication by touting how a product fits a niche or solves a problem, many brands overlook the fact that consumers typically make purchase decisions based on emotions rather than logic.
This is not to say that brands should ignore customer data and analytics in favor of purely emotional messages based on the “gut feeling” of a marketing executive. Rather, it’s possible to identify and measure high-impact emotional motivators that drive consumer behavior.
So when your company faces a crisis, an awkward moment or simply needs to break through a sea-of-sameness, consider acknowledging a vulnerability and leaning into it. As these examples demonstrate, sometimes a perceived weakness can be turned into a strength.