Samosa Snippets Latest Stories

Why irrelevant posts are working for brands

These posts are not just popular, they tend to provide brands with results in the form of the number of likes, shares and reposts on the social media platforms.

author-image
Payal Navarkar
New Update
fi (58)

Have you ever stopped on a brand's social media page and wondered why they're posting a hilarious cat meme that has nothing to do with their business? It might seem like a mistake, but it's a deliberate and strategic shift in how companies are trying to connect with you. The truth is, the meme isn't relevant to their product; it's relevant to their audience.

This new approach is all about being remembered. In a world full of advertising, the absurd or funny content is designed to make a brand stick in your mind, ensuring it's the one you recall later.

At its core, this shift is a response to how people use social media. They don't want to engage with a faceless corporation. When a brand shares a relatable post, like a cat meme or a joke about salary day, it shows there are real people behind the account who understand their audience's life and sense of humour. This fosters a more genuine connection.

Social media is the place where trends are born, news stories break, and cultural ties are formed.

The posts aren't just popular; they tend to lead to high engagement for the brands. A post by Swiggy India, for example, a food delivery platform, received over 130,000 likes within a week, with a meme cat posing in the post.

A study by Marketing Research Centre, The Ehrenberg-Bass Institute, found that videos evoking strong emotions such as joy or surprise are twice as likely to be shared on social media platforms. Videos that are easy to share and use popular hashtags or trends can reach a bigger audience quickly. The cat videos have these in loads. The hashtag #cat is in the top 100 trending hashtags of 2025, BBC reported.

According toThe Sprout Social Index 2025, 93% of consumers agree that it’s important for brands to keep up with online culture. The social media lexicon has morphed into a dialect all its own. Memes and viral moments are generational touchstones.  Brands are expected to be culturally competent to understand their consumers and emerge at the top of their industry.

Memes have become a dominant part of internet culture. According to consumer surveys in a ResearchGate study, about 75% of 13-36-year-olds actively share memes, making it one of the most shared forms of digital content.

Recognising their widespread appeal, an increasing number of brands integrate memes into their social media strategy. Netflix, for example, creates memes related to its series, while BarkBox uses dog memes to showcase its dog-related products and services.

Brands are also using what's been called ‘brain rot’ content, chaotic, low-stakes humor that mimics the unfiltered randomness of social media feeds. This isn't a recycled ad; it's a deliberate choice to engage with the logic of digital humour: fast, self-aware, and designed to stop you from scrolling past.

Rapido, for instance, uses this strategy to stay relevant in Gen Z meme culture. The content builds familiarity through its tone, aiming to become a brand that their audience thinks of automatically. As Srishti Pandey, Creator & Founding Member of The New Thing, told us previously, while talking about mastering the art of marketing on X, "These campaigns showed that relevance, humour, and timing are key to standing out on X."

While this approach generates significant engagement, it doesn't always lead directly to sales. In an earlier article, Vikas Chawla, Co-Founder of Social Beat, notes that platforms like X (formerly Twitter) are more effective for building brand perception and thought leadership than for direct conversions. He says its "strength lies in conversation-driven marketing rather than direct-response advertising."

Sprout Social’s report also noted, “Posting constantly won’t endear people to you. It’s more important to engage and interact with them. Even in a space as densely populated as social, the one-to-one moments still matter.”

Ultimately, these humorous and relatable posts are not about making a quick sale. They are about building a lasting relationship with an audience that sees the brand as an ally, not just an advertiser.

For brands aiming to strengthen their presence online, here’s a look at how others are approaching this space.

Brands aim to target another such emotion, which is nostalgia. The nostalgic post about viewers' chocolate preferences, habits, sports, or food items that remind them of their old days, is likely to connect more with them and automatically tends to gain more engagement in the form of likes, shares and reposts.

Another relatable content that works well for them is tapping into everyday, simple moments of their audience's lives. Imagine a post about their salary day on their feed on the 1st day of the month and developing emotions in them when they are yet to receive their salary, as it is credited on the 7th of the month. Or similarly, reminding them of the first day of the week after a peaceful weekend and they have to go to work again.

The most common content that the brands post and work effectively is the seasonal/festive posts, as they tap into moment marketing during the seasons. You can post your discounts and offers, creative static posts, or dynamic videos; they tend to work effectively if used appropriate platform.

Other times, when pop culture developments turn brands into the artists' fans and thus capitalise on the cultural development. This was most prominent when Taylor Swift recently announced her engagement and brands suddenly dived into the Swifties' pool to connect with their Swifty consumers. These might help you gain a new audience or even consumers as they prove to effectively resonate with the internet audience.

For instance, this post by Poppi saw a significantly higher engagement with over 42K likes as compared to its other reels and posts in the same time frame, which gained around 10-12k likes.

Additionally, brands like Ikea tapped into the then on-air show The Summer I Turned Pretty, to market their soft toy, swiftly integrating the pop culture reference and thus building a connection with over a thousand followers.

But do these posts always work? What are the things that should be kept in mind while curating nd posting such content?

To answer this, a Sprout Social report noted that such content does not work for everyone by everyone on the internet. It recorded 27% people thinking it's only effective inthe first 24-48 hoursof a trend’s lifespan, 40% thinking it's cool to follow a trend and integrate it into brand messaging, while 33% found it embarrassing.

The report also states that 73% of social users agree that if a brand doesn’t respond on social, they’ll buy from a competitor. This indicates that you, as a brand, need to be accountable and not just chronically online.

One such social media stunt that failed was in 2022, when India lost to England in the ICC T20 World Cup. To capture the nation's grief, brands created topical memes, but some might have gone too far in the process.

Myntra climbed on the troll bandwagon and shared a tweet about Indian cricketer KL Rahul, who was brutally bashed on social media for an unfortunate game. The post received backlash in no time.

publive-image

Karthik Srinivasan, a communication and social media expert, said in his LinkedIn post, "The irony is that when individual people do this, it may pass off, because well... people are people. But brands really don't need to get down to this level just for getting so-called 'engagement'."

Another was Burger King’s Women’s Day post that drew backlash. The tweet opened with “Women belong in the kitchen,” intended as clickbait for announcing a women’s culinary scholarship. Instead, it was criticised for reinforcing stereotypes, leading the company to delete the post after negative reactions.

cat memes chaotic humour Brands Memes Social media