@BrandsSayingBae Mocks Bad Marketing

Nothing screams profit desperation quite like the attempts of our elders to adopt millennial vernacular. And thanks to Twitter account Brands Saying Bae, we’re able to gawk at the astonishingly bleak efforts of brands trying to connect with their youth demographics. Everything cringeworthy, from “bruh” to “on fleek” to emoticon hearts take up space in the feeds of household brand names such as Whole Foods and Pizza Hut, because nothing says hip quite like corporate franchising.

Perhaps most curious of all, however, is the way these fleeting moments of youth culture cognizance are peppered in with the most banal of branded promotional tweets. A good example of one such occurrence was screen grabbed from two Applebee’s tweets posted within an hour of each other; the first reads, “Powerfully delicious & infused with flavor. Our NEW Cesar-Grilled Lemon Chicken will leave you wanting more.” The second depicts the eatery’s (undeniably) farm-to-table and locally sourced sampler platter accompanied by a single descriptor: “Swag.”

In this particular instance, it would seem a PR company scheduled beforehand tweets and then set a reddit-rabid social media intern loose to cover @ replies. Regardless, @BrandsSayingBae is here to round up all of the most awkward intersections of corporate marketing and semi-cohesive attempts at accessibility. Take a look at some greatest hits below.

Image: CurvaBezier /Fotolia