Why The Real Social Gold Is In The D-Grade Comments Section
If you’ve spent more than three minutes on any major brand’s Facebook post this year, you’ve seen it: a molehill-sized post turned into a Himalaya of chaotic, unhinged engagement.
Take a limp promotional video for a once-loved chocolate bar reboot. The comments section? A warzone. Packed with nostalgic boomers, semi-bot meme accounts, grammar vigilantes, and a lone guy demanding the return of peanut slabs in foil. But here’s the wild twist — this is where some of the best brand storytelling is happening. Not in the glossy post copy, but two inches beneath it, in the comment replies, gifs, and surreal tangents about childhood lunchboxes.
Some brands get this. Wendy’s (sorry, American example, but hard to ignore), Spark’s Twitter team in December 2024, and oddly, MetService during last September’s rain debacle. These teams didn’t hijack the chaos. They joined it like locals at a neighbourhood bar. No branded banter, just digital humanity with a wink. This isn’t just audience “engagement.” It’s content fermentation. Deep flavour comes over time, and gutsy brands are marinating in it.
So why are marketers still chasing sterile campaign reach when the richest cultural moments are busting out below fold? Scroll down. Reply first. Stop thinking of the creative as the post and start treating the comments section like a set. Because in 2025, the best branded content often begins with someone saying, “who remembers this?” and another replying, “I still have one of those in my glovebox.”
Take a limp promotional video for a once-loved chocolate bar reboot. The comments section? A warzone. Packed with nostalgic boomers, semi-bot meme accounts, grammar vigilantes, and a lone guy demanding the return of peanut slabs in foil. But here’s the wild twist — this is where some of the best brand storytelling is happening. Not in the glossy post copy, but two inches beneath it, in the comment replies, gifs, and surreal tangents about childhood lunchboxes.
Some brands get this. Wendy’s (sorry, American example, but hard to ignore), Spark’s Twitter team in December 2024, and oddly, MetService during last September’s rain debacle. These teams didn’t hijack the chaos. They joined it like locals at a neighbourhood bar. No branded banter, just digital humanity with a wink. This isn’t just audience “engagement.” It’s content fermentation. Deep flavour comes over time, and gutsy brands are marinating in it.
So why are marketers still chasing sterile campaign reach when the richest cultural moments are busting out below fold? Scroll down. Reply first. Stop thinking of the creative as the post and start treating the comments section like a set. Because in 2025, the best branded content often begins with someone saying, “who remembers this?” and another replying, “I still have one of those in my glovebox.”