Why Meme Marketers Hate Congratulations

With more budgets moving to influencer and meme marketing, it's sometimes hard to tell what is an ad and what isn't

- Soumya Gupta

For some months now, when social media marketing agencies run campaigns on X, they have been stressing about what seems to be a mildly positive phrase—"congratulations to the marketing team." This phrase often pops up as a comment or quote tweets that are designed for 'meme marketing'—a strategy where brands rope in social media accounts with a big following to post something organic, like an anecdote or a quotidian photograph and subtly integrate a brand in it. For instance, a screenshot of a fight between two lovers over WhatsApp may contain references to a dating app, or a video of a post-breakup crying session may include an ice-cream in a quick-commerce company's brown bag on the kitchen counter.

But why would congratulations from a faceless, nameless X account bother brands running such campaigns? Because the wishes are sarcastic.

It all started with a simple, sarcastic phrase that 35-year-old Bengaluru founder and former marketer Phalgun Guduthur couldn't resist replying with to a X post going viral sometime last year. That post was a candid moment from the life of an influencer, but, Guduthur says, was anything but candid.

"I could clearly see that it was staged, rather than a real tweet," he says. "It used to annoy me because it was a mixture of feeling deceived and being annoyed at the rage bait and noise around such tweets."

Guduthur didn't want to pick up an online fight, so instead, he picked the mildest, nicest, most sarcastic way of calling out what he argued was an undisclosed ad. In the comments, he wrote: "congratulations to the marketing team" along with the handshake emoji.