As social media becomes an increasingly popular way for brands to gain publicity and attention, companies often use approaches that differ from those used by traditional media in an attempt to go “viral” online. One of these tactics is deploying a “sassy” or “relatable” social media presence to seem authentic and subversive. Perhaps the most widely known example of this phenomenon is the Wendy’s Twitter. However, another brand that went viral this way is MoonPie. I’ve literally never had a MoonPie in my life, and actually had no idea what was in them until I looked it up (graham crackers, marshmallows, and chocolate), but somehow, a viral tweet of theirs from a few years ago stuck in my memory, as pictured below. Therefore, I thought it would be interesting to analyze their social media presence.
The brand uses Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, and Pinterest. In my opinion, they have a pretty wide reach and are very visible, though they are definitely most popular on Twitter, where they have 301K followers. MoonPie uses a slightly different approach and tone on each of these platforms, so I will delve into each of them individually. I will begin with Twitter, since it is the most popular of their social media accounts by far.
Twitter
@MoonPie on Twitter is run by Patrick Wells, a creative at the Tombras Group, a family-run business that manages MoonPie’s social media. They emphasize the importance of staying true to their brand’s image as fun and simple, and therefore, the tone of their tweets is often comedic and silly, frequently engaging with meme culture or imitating the style of Internet jokes. This makes the brand seem up-to-date with the trends of Internet-savvy teens and young adults, and the vast majority of @MoonPie’s tweets are very retweet-friendly. The humorous tone with little official material emphasizes the “relatability” of the brand, which is a key factor in maintaining an audience on social media (Navar-Gill, 2018, p. 417).
Another way that @MoonPie often seems “relatable” or “authentic” is by referencing the fact that a real person runs the account. While I didn’t encounter any instances explicitly namedropping the individual running the Twitter (though I assume it’s still Patrick Wells), they often demonstrate that one person is in charge of @MoonPie through other methods. The author frequently references their boss, demonstrating that they are not high up in their company. This is an attempt to build ethos and prove that they are “just like us,” enhancing the brand’s relatability to the average social media user.
The other tactic the account manager uses is being humorously self-deprecating about their job, minimizing their role in the company as “just writing the tweets.” This builds sympathy for whoever runs the account, making them seem more human and relatable. @FakingItWriters uses a similar tactic, and it makes switching from personal posts to promotional posts that request fan labor seem a lot more natural and authentic (Navar-Gill, 2018, p. 426). While the definition of “authentic” constantly shifts across different social contexts, highlighting the human behind the Twitter account as a someone with emotions and personality helps to explain inconsistencies in content or tone (Marwick & boyd, 2010, p. 124). Additionally, when they request fan labor, it seems like a friend asking for help, rather than a cold and emotionless brand taking your money. This comes across as far more genuine and is more likely to get a positive response.
@MoonPie also establishes a sense of friendship with their followers through their use of “sassy” humor. They don’t get mean enough to be truly “edgy” or “offensive,” but it’s enough to seem subversive and unique. This strategy is similar to that used by @OrangeWriters, where the posts are framed almost like inside jokes (Navar-Gill, 2018, p. 424). This creates an atmosphere of intimacy between the corporation and their followers, even if they don’t quite get the joke (Navar-Gill, 2018, p. 424). The tweets also seem more authentic because they feel less like they’ve been vetted by a social media team, and more like something that any normal Twitter user would post. This is an intentional strategy to build trust, because authenticity is highly valued on social media (Marwick & boyd, 2010, p. 124).
@MoonPie also uses light teasing to create this sense of intimacy in their direct interactions with other Twitter users, both by responding to the replies left on their tweets and through retweeting people who have mentioned their product. This way of communicating gives the impression of talking to a comfortable long-term friend (Navar-Gill, 2018, p. 423). They even respond to other brand accounts with a similar tone, which makes them seem even more genuine, despite the fact that this kind of publicity is good for both MoonPie and the other brand.
Lastly, the MoonPie Twitter often tweets or retweets about the moon and space. They also frequently tweet directly at NASA. This brings attention and support to their petition to NASA to put a MoonPie on the moon. To me, this is a blatant publicity stunt that is never meant to actually happen, but brings more attention to the brand. By leading their audience to enjoy participating in a humorous campaign effort, the brand gets free publicity!
MoonPie’s overall approach to Twitter appeals to teens and young adults who know a lot about Internet culture. This is certainly a constructed and calculated approach. The nature of social media means that MoonPie doesn’t know who their actual audience is, so they construct their posts for who they imagine their audience to be (Marwick & boyd, 2010, p. 115). In this case, they believe it to be these teens and young adults. Overall, I think that their approach to Twitter is highly successful and memorable. The only thing I would think they’d need to do to improve is to make sure they remain up-to-date on current Internet trends, or else they risk seeming cringey and out-of-date.
Facebook
They also frequently post about their petition to put MoonPies in space on their Facebook page, even referencing it in their header. Rather than making jokes about the moon or trying to get NASA’s attention through jokes like they do on Twitter, there is more of a direct plea to their viewers to sign the petition. I believe that this is because the culture and affordances of Twitter are more equipped for quickly sharing posts and making them go viral when compared to Facebook, which tends to move much slower (Bonilla & Rosa, 2015, p. 8).
It seems like the audience that MoonPie is aiming for on Facebook is primarily the older crowd, which lines up with the stereotype of older people preferring Facebook. However, they do still retain some of their comedic tone, meaning the general “vibe” is not completely incompatible with that of their Twitter account. To improve their strategy, I think it might be good to post more often, since right now, they post about once a month. Additionally, they could post a wider variety of content, because it seems like a lot of their page is dominated by images of MoonPies with silly captions, which may be more fitting for Instagram.
Instagram
MoonPie also has an Instagram account, @theoriginalmoonpie, which has 17.2K followers, a significant reduction from their Twitter and Facebook. The images that MoonPie posts here are a mix of aesthetically pleasing pictures and meme or joke pictures, though they all are relatively visually cohesive. This gives a good balance between humor and aesthetics, which is important for appealing to a broad audience, but still gives the account a consistent and professional appearance (Marwick & boyd, 2010, p. 126). The captions they use, however, are usually very similar to their tweets. It appears that MoonPie assumes that individuals who look at their Instagram are probably also familiar with their Twitter, which wasn’t the case with their Facebook account.
The comment sections on their Instagram posts consist primarily of people playing along with the jokes, showing support, or asking for acknowledgement. To me, this shows how effective their social media presence has been. However, I also noticed that MoonPie rarely responds to comments on Instagram, especially when compared to the activity on their Twitter and Facebook. This lack of interaction might reflect the norms of the platform they’re operating on, or it might just indicate that they place more value on Facebook and Twitter.
Overall, I believe that MoonPie’s Instagram account is run with the intent to reach a similar audience as their Twitter. Therefore, the audience they are imagining and targeting is young adults and teens who are familiar with the Internet. However, their tone is somewhat more professional and distant from their fans, which I think this fits with the norms of Instagram as being more “formal” than Twitter. But, I think that responding to more comments on Instagram might boost their following to be closer to Facebook and Twitter.
Pinterest
Pinterest doesn’t have comment sections, so there is a lot less direct interaction with followers on this site. This doesn’t mean there is a complete lack of interactivity, however. The pins in their boards are often fanmade, meaning they are promoting the creations of their fans, even if they’re not directly speaking to them. This encourages productive fan behavior by rewarding the fans who create things related to their brand (Navar-Gill, 2018, p. 416). Therefore, even though the interactivity is different because of the site’s technical affordances, MoonPie still encourages fan engagement on Pinterest.
The audience that MoonPie hails on Pinterest is productive fans, who do more than passively comment on social media, but actually create art and crafts for the things they are interested in. By promoting fanmade material, MoonPie encourages this behavior. To improve their social media presence on Pinterest, MoonPie should be more active about making new boards and promoting more content. This would make productive fans feel more welcome, and encourage more fan activity.
Conclusion
Overall, I found that MoonPie uses a different approach and tone for each social media platform that they are on, adjusting to the affordances of each site to their advantage and targeting the demographics most likely to frequent them. Shah (2016) asserted that in the current age, different social media platforms specialize in specific areas, rather than one platform encompassing a comprehensive identity. MoonPie exemplifies this in the way that they adapt to each of the platforms they use. However, across all of their social media accounts, they have a unifying theme of being fun and “authentic.” I believe that their social media strategy will continue to be successful if they continue doing what they’ve been doing. With wide support, maybe they really can get MoonPies on the moon!
References
Bonilla, Y., & Rosa, J. (2015). #Ferguson: Digital protest, hashtag ethnography, and the racial politics of social media in the United States. American Ethnologist 42(1), 4-17.
Marwick, A. E., & boyd, d. (2010). I tweet honestly, I tweet passionately: Twitter users, context collapse, and the imagined audience. New Media & Society 13(1), 114–133. doi:10.1177/1461444810365313
Navar-Gill, A. (2018). From strategic retweets to group hangs: Writers’ room Twitter accounts and the productive ecosystem of TV social media fans. Television & New Media, 19(5), 415-430. doi:10.1177/1527476417728376
Shah, S. (2016, May 14). The history of social networking. Digital Trends. Retrieved from https://www.digitaltrends.com/
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