Wendy's starting roasting customers back in 2017 was a breach of protocol. A brand that size replying like a person genuinely confused people. That confusion was the value. It took a few years for every fast-food chain, airline, and snack brand to adopt the same register.

Nutter Butter posts distorted, chaotic TikToks with no product logic. Dunkin' builds a flirtatious spider character. Netflix captions its Instagram posts with meme templates any brand could use. Different companies, different categories, identical behaviour. Sprout Social's Q2 2025 Pulse Survey found that only 23% of consumers consider unhinged brands "bold" — while 50% said the boldest brands are simply the most honest ones. Rachel Karten, who consults on brand social strategy, put the problem plainly: go to the comment section of any viral post and all the brands commenting sound exactly the same. Personality became a style guide item, not a strategic position. Even Apple — a company that until recently barely acknowledged social media existed — launched the MacBook Neo with absurdist TikToks so chaotic that commenters asked if the account had been hacked. When the most controlled brand on earth starts posting lemons receiving FaceTime calls, the format has fully standardised.

Ryanair is a case worth separating from the rest. 2.7 million TikTok followers built on self-deprecating humour about the very things customers complain about — cramped seats, hidden fees, the bare minimum. The personality works precisely because it doesn't pretend the product is something it isn't. That's not unhinged branding; it's radical coherence with a low-cost proposition. The difference between Ryanair and Nutter Butter is that Ryanair's tone is tethered to a product truth. When it isn't, personality is just decoration.

The counter-examples sit in a different category entirely. Costco has kept its hot dog combo at $1.50 since 1985, barely advertises, and charges you a membership fee just to shop there — Gen Z and Millennial sales are up 12% year-on-year, and young shoppers are pooling memberships and bulk-buying in groups just to get access. Decathlon is the world's largest sports retailer with no celebrity endorsements and near-zero marketing spend — it sells a hiking backpack with a 10-year warranty for the price of a cocktail, and lets that do the talking. Monzo passed 15 million customers in 2026, with two-thirds of sign-ups coming from word of mouth — no campaign, no character, just instant spending notifications that most high-street banks still can't match. None of these brands have a social media personality worth mentioning. All of them have a product behaviour worth copying — which, as it turns out, is harder.