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Brands That Became Unhinged & Why It Worked for Them

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Brands are constantly looking for the best ways to market themselves and their products. There isn’t a one-size-fits-all solution to marketing, which means sometimes the more unorthodox approaches can gain traction. Of all the more memorable and engaging ways you can market in 2025, going down the rabbit hole that is unhinged marketing can prove to be successful.

What Is Unhinged Marketing?

Where more buttoned-up, and traditional strategies look for professionalism and brand consistency, unhinged marketing embraces absurdity, irreverence, and unpredictability as its core tactics. People often assume unhinged marketing is simply edgy marketing. Those people are wrong, but no one would blame them. Where the tone of edgy marketing leads toward provocative and challenging, unhinged marketing is chaotic, nonsensical, and even aggressively absurd. A bit of a fine line, but there is a line nonetheless. 

If you’re uninitiated, here’s an example so you aren’t lost for the rest of this blog:

That is a TikTok from Ryanair, an “ultra-low-cost” (per Wikipedia) airline that is one of the more preeminent brands using this style of marketing. Normally from an airline, you’d expect messaging about safety, comfort, and convenience. Ryanair stands out because they don’t care about any of that. In fact, they often take a hostile tone towards their own customers. “Yeah we’re cheap. Yeah, our service sucks. What are you going to do about it?” On paper, it shouldn’t make us want to buy a ticket on the next available Ryanair flight, but it does.

Where Unhinged Marketing Works Best

Yes, unhinged marketing can turn your brand into social media superstars, but this strategy isn’t some universal recipe that’s built for instant success. Typically, this approach thrives with more consumer-focused brands that already possess—or are building toward—a distinct, playful, or irreverent voice. Think your snack foods, beverages, fast food chains, entertainment brands, or lifestyle products. These are industries where the stakes for taking marketing risks are already relatively low, and the payoff from capturing attention is huge. Not much to lose per se, but a lot to gain. If it goes well, that is.

But why do these brands fare better? Because their customer base already expects to be entertained. In fact, engagement is usually part of the experience. Customers want interactions that feel humorous, and relatable. In short, they want those brands to feel “human”. Unhinged marketing fits right into these spaces, leveraging viral culture and absurdity to build affinity and attention.

Where It Isn’t the Move

Of course, there’s a yin to the yang of unhinged marketing. When an industry is built on trust, seriousness, or sensitivity - healthcare, finance, or some high-end luxury sectors-, they have to go into unhinged marketing with extreme caution if not outright avoiding it. A tweet (or whatever they’re called now that it's X) about heart surgery or an out-there Instagram post from an investment bank could easily backfire, damaging their credibility and trust when it was meant to boost brand recognition.

Brand voice compatibility is crucial when it comes to unhinged marketing. If your brand is already associated with professionalism, authority, and seriousness, a sudden pivot to chaotic or dank memes could confuse or alienate existing customers. Successful unhinged marketing requires brands to embrace risk openly, meaning that consistency and risk tolerance are key.

Even brands naturally suited to unhinged marketing face challenges, such as maintaining audience interest once the initial shock fades, staying culturally relevant without seeming desperate, or managing crises if a joke lands poorly. (Which happens from time to time. More on that later.)

What Is the Goal of Unhinged Marketing?

The goal of this loud, absurd, in-your-face marketing style is typically brand awareness. More specifically, brand awareness among a younger audience like Gen Z and younger millennials. We know this is the target audience because of the medium, social media platforms like X, TikTok and Instagram that skew younger. And because the tone, the unhingedness if you will, is mirroring the style of humor shown in the memes of this demographic.

Where Did it Come From?

Let’s try to explain memes without sounding too old, out-of-touch, and/or crusty. Unhinged marketing is largely about adopting the type of humor that already exists online. Take a look at this popular meme from 2018. Now it’s already seven years ago, an eternity in internet time, and probably makes us look old and out of touch for including it, but stay with us.

If you’ve never seen this before, you’re probably thinking, “What on earth is that monstrosity?” So let us give you the context behind this image: there is none. The closest thing to context for this image is this history from Know Your Meme that itself can’t explain “why?”

And again, this is from seven years ago. Online humor has arguably become even more absurd since then. This style of marketing is all about standing out from other companies, by making content that's so much more absurd then theirs, but also feels familiar to the audience. What brands could possibly look at something like the image above and be bold enough to match this energy?

A Study in Ryanair

Let’s start with Ryanair since we’ve already seen some of their handiwork. They posted their first TikTok in 2020 and it was a fairly generic office tour of their headquarters. Nothing out of the ordinary, apart from the slide which we’re definitely not jealous of, especially since Tiktok content is often used as a recruiting tool.

It did not take long for Ryanair’s TikTok to show signs of what it would become. Their very next post was them highlighting a bunch of negative comments on their first post, as a popular audio clip of someone wheeze laughing played over it.

They initially didn’t post frequently, but one of their early posts included their now famous plane with someone’s eyes and mouth superimposed onto it. Their third such post, got 8.8 million views, and they knew they were really onto something.

Community Engagement

One thing Ryanair does better than just about any other brand is interacting with their viewers by responding to social media comments. Not only that, but they maintain the same voice and tone that they have in the content that they post.

Take a look at this TikTok that they posted, but BE ADVISED: turn your device’s volume very low first.

No need to thank us for the warning. But behold, the top comment and Ryanair’s response:

They are constantly responding to comments, keeping the same energy that they had in the video. They inconvenienced their viewers with a loud TikTok, and then doubled down, the loveable scamps.

Duolingo: A Murderer Most Fowl

Unlike the other that made a strategic choice to venture into the unhinged, Duolingo’s marketing strategy is largely the product of circumstance, and taking advantage of an opportunity when it presented itself.

Duolingo is a language learning app that launched in 2012 and reached 200 million downloads in 2017. Here is an example of what their marketing looked like in their early days:

It’s very corporate, professional, and the kind of thing you would expect in the tech industry. Their CEO discusses his altruistic mission of democratizing language education.

In October of that year, users started making memes about what they felt were frequent, bordering on threatening, push notifications from the app, always accompanied by the icon of their mascot, Duo the owl, staring daggers through them.

And thus, the “Evil Duolingo Owl” meme was born.

This became an incredibly popular meme and led to the app gaining an additional 100 million downloads in 2018. 

You may also notice that this is pretty stark contrast to the brand image that they had sought to create with videos like the one shown above. But sometimes you just have to go with what’s working. Duolingo started to feed into the meme, posting stuff like this on their official accounts: 

The murderous Duo meme, like any meme, eventually reached the end of its natural life. While Duolingo eventually moved on from the “Evil Duolingo Owl,” opting for new character arcs like the owl’s funeral, the attention they received during this time meant that their new social media marketing tone was here to stay.

At the time of writing, Duolingo has 4.4 million followers on Instagram, 16.7 million followers on TikTok. They even have 696 thousand followers on LinkedIn, where this type of content doesn’t play as well, but they do a great job of matching their overall brand voice to the more subdued tone of the platform.

The Dangers of Unhinged Marketing

While the unhinged approach to social media marketing is a great way of increasing brand awareness because it’s memorable in a social media landscape where, frankly, a lot of brands sound the same, and it appeals to peoples’ senses of humor (ours anyway) to the point where they share it.

But it’s not for everyone.

You Have To Commit to the Bit

For starters, it’s harder to pull off than it looks. Each of the brands listed above put a lot of effort and planning into appearing spontaneous and laid back. You may think all this content is being produced by a single social media intern who doesn’t care whether or not they get fired, and that’s what they want you to think, but in reality, there are many people, doing plenty of market research in order to decide when to take calculated risks. Being seen as authentic on social media is difficult enough for individuals, let alone entire companies. It’s definitely possible to do with great success, as shown by the examples above, but it requires a certain level of commitment to the craft. 

For example, Duolingo posted on TikTok 290 times in 2024. And the production value is not low. Some of them are edits, based on existing memes, that were likely done entirely by phone, but others involve several people in full owl costumes. Now, no one starts at the top, but before dabbling with unhinged marketing and social media content, ask yourself, “Is my brand Heath Ledger’s Joker, or a guy cosplaying as Heath Ledger’s Joker?” And to be clear, it’s perfectly fine to be just a guy cosplaying as Heath Ledger’s Joker. The real one blew up a hospital, which Mad Genius does not condone.

It Can Take Over Your Brand

Another aspect to consider is that posting enough of this content on social media or other mediums is akin to opening Pandora’s box. At a certain point, your brand will become this, and it’ll be difficult to pivot. For a brand like Duolingo to change their strategy–they wouldn’t do this because they’re absolutely killing it, but let’s just pretend–back to the buttoned-up, aspirational startup that they used to market themselves as, it would be a long trek, if it’s even possible.

Please Have Some Self Awareness

Whether or not a company can succeed at unhinged marketing is largely dependent on pre-existing public perception and industry. There are always exceptions to the rule, like Ryanair for example. One typically looks for competence and professionalism from an airline, but Ryanair doesn’t care what you want, and that’s why it’s great.

But certain businesses in certain industries should stay professional, or they risk backlash from missing the mark while trying to be funny. Look at this since deleted tweet from Chase Bank:

“How do you do, fellow kids?”

As you might have expected, a bank with total assets valued in the trillions (yes, with a ‘T’) calling everyone broke did not go over well with the general public. This is a gentle reminder to everyone that sometimes a bank should just sound like a bank, and that’s okay.

Sectors like healthcare, finance, and some high-end luxury brands, have to go into unhinged marketing with extreme caution if not avoid it outright. A tweet (or whatever they’re called now that it's X) about heart surgery could, damaging their credibility and trust when it was meant to boost brand recognition.

Brand voice compatibility is crucial when it comes to unhinged marketing. If your brand is already associated with professionalism, authority, and seriousness, a sudden pivot to chaotic or dank memes could confuse or alienate existing customers. Successful unhinged marketing requires brands to embrace risk openly, meaning that consistency and risk tolerance are key.

Even brands naturally suited to unhinged marketing face challenges, such as maintaining audience interest once the initial shock fades, staying culturally relevant without seeming desperate, or managing crises if a joke lands poorly.

Take a look at this screenshot of a YouTube shorts ad by Kayak. We’d include the video, but YouTube in their infinite wisdom doesn’t think us commoners are responsible enough to share ads, or play with marbles, lest we choke on them.

Look familiar? It’s strikingly similar to Ryanair’s style. To be fair, it’s not like Ryanair has a monopoly on superimposing a person’s face onto a mode of transportation–they most likely weren’t even the first to do it–but this just feels like a cheap imitation. Also, in all likelihood, because it’s paid media, the tone was completely subdued. The copy had none of the shock value, sass, or, dare we say, tomfoolery one would expect from this visual. 

Organic social media is much more of a playground where brands can experiment and push the limits of what they can get away with posting. Being a little more buttoned-up is almost inherent in paid advertising, no matter which medium.

Even Unhinged Marketing Can Start to Sound Same-Y

Most brands become unhinged because they’re trying to stand out. But in the irony of all ironies, there is always the chance that they start to sound just like all the other brands that don’t want to sound mainstream. Being “unhinged” is not enough of a differentiator on its own. Every brand needs to find its own voice and what makes it unique. 

Of the examples in this blog, notice that they all have their own flavor. Ryanair has the plane with the face superimposed on it. Duolingo has the murderous owl, and eventually the owl that was murdered. Sure, there’s some overlap because they’re often making posts about trends, but they each make them their own.

Looking to get a little “out there” with your next big marketing campaign? We’d love to help. No, really. Our geniuses want to let their hair down (those that have it anyway) and do something wild. Fill out the form below, speak with a genius today!