There is per­haps some­thing innate­ly human in the desire to cor­rect mis­takes. And that desire is some­times accom­pa­nied with a cer­tain sense of glee or even smug­ness in the observ­er. Some might even call it schaden­freude. And in the nev­er-end­ing mar­ket­ing quest to cut through noise on social, a num­ber of brands are mak­ing mis­takes on pur­pose with the spe­cif­ic inten­tion of tap­ping into this human behav­ior, or at the least, to pique con­sumers’ inter­est. Recent/notable exam­ples have come from brands like Host­ess, as well as Monster.com and JCPen­ney.

While mak­ing a mis­take can be quite pow­er­ful on a sin­gle occa­sion, it’s a strat­e­gy with some­what lim­it­ed effec­tive­ness in terms of repeata­bil­i­ty. So, oth­er than snag­ging con­sumers’ atten­tion in a sin­gle moment, why do brands do it? And what do oth­er brands need to know before try­ing out this strat­e­gy?

We talked to the brands them­selves, as well as adver­tis­ing exec­u­tives, to find out.

Hostess

For major league baseball’s Open­ing Day, snack brand Host­ess post­ed a tweet that jum­bled sports lin­go with the cap­tion, “Touch­down.”

It’s here and we could­n’t be filled with more sweet joy. #Open­ing­Day pic.twitter.com/YndEyEgQQa — Host­ess Snacks (@Hostess_Snacks) April 6, 2015

It is per­haps the most recent exam­ple of brands pur­pose­ly mak­ing mis­takes in order to gen­er­ate buzz and/or to make a point.

“Since embark­ing on the ‘Sweet­est Come­back in the His­to­ry of Ever’ near­ly two years ago, Host­ess has employed a strat­e­gy aimed at con­tem­po­riz­ing the brand. The bold­er approach has been par­tic­u­lar­ly vis­i­ble in the brand’s social media plat­forms,” accord­ing to Ellen Copak­en, senior direc­tor of mar­ket­ing at Host­ess. “The ‘Touch­down’ line was inten­tion­al; it’s fun and aimed at young audi­ences who are in on the run­ning joke — which, of course, is the goal­l­ll.”

The tweet itself gen­er­at­ed about 1,400 retweets and 950 favorites and an unsci­en­tif­ic review of the com­ments reveals a mix of con­fu­sion and/or con­sumers jump­ing to cor­rect Host­ess’ mis­take, as well as those laugh­ing at what they believe to be Host­ess’ own con­fu­sion and still more Twit­ter users extend­ing the joke fur­ther with addi­tion­al sports metaphors.

Monster.com

Host­ess cer­tain­ly isn’t the first brand to attempt to cap­ture con­sumer atten­tion in this man­ner. For its part, employ­ment web­site Mon­ster con­grat­u­lat­ed the wrong team as the 2015 Super Bowl vic­tor in a tweet that also high­light­ed the brand’s own ser­vices.

Con­grat­u­la­tions Seat­tle from http://t.co/sPr4G1gHup! #biggame pic.twitter.com/eAa59yw1om — Mon­ster (@Monster) Feb­ru­ary 2, 2015

Mon­ster, which has pre­vi­ous­ly adver­tised in the Super Bowl, but opt­ed out in Super Bowl XLIX, want­ed to still par­tic­i­pate in the moment and in kick­ing around ideas, set­tled on the con­cept of con­grat­u­lat­ing the wrong team, said Matt Anchin, Monster’s senior vice pres­i­dent of glob­al com­mu­ni­ca­tions.

“A lot of peo­ple were ner­vous. A lot of the com­pa­ny is Boston-based, so if [New Eng­land] lost and we said, ‘Con­grat­u­la­tions,’ we were not sure if we would have employ­ees with torch­es and pitch­forks,” Anchin said.

In addi­tion, the brand knew many view­ers would see the tweet on mobile devices and Twit­ter would only dis­play the thumb­nail, so only those users who actu­al­ly clicked on the tweet would see the com­plete mes­sage and under­stand the joke.

Indeed, many of the ini­tial com­ments point to Monster’s mis­take until, Anchin said, “The crowd did what every­one hopes for, which is self-polic­ing and cor­rect­ing, jump­ing in to say, ‘It was a joke! They did it on pur­pose.’”

The goal was to come up with “some enter­tain­ing and engag­ing tweets” and “some­thing that sparks con­ver­sa­tion” among mil­len­ni­als, Anchin said.

The tweet itself result­ed in 4,400 retweets and 2,700 favorites, and, Anchin said, the brand saw a 1,700 per­cent increase in activ­i­ty from a typ­i­cal Sun­day. In addi­tion, he notes, “We saw a few peo­ple delete their tweets when they real­ized they total­ly missed it and before we could count them and ana­lyt­ics could get them.”

What’s more, Anchin said, some employ­ees with­in Mon­ster want­ed to repeat the effort for oth­er events like the Oscars, but “we decid­ed to take a much more judi­cious approach. I think it will lose its val­ue if we over­play it.”

How­ev­er, he said, “We would def­i­nite­ly do it again if we felt it was a good and oppor­tune moment.”

JCPenney

Retail­er JCPen­ney, too, opt­ed for an in-game mis­take strat­e­gy for the 2014 Super Bowl in a series of typo-laden tweets that the brand lat­er revealed to be the result of #Tweet­ing­With­Mit­tens.

“With the game tak­ing place out­doors in cold weath­er, we thought it could be a fun way to pro­mote our Go USA mittens…especially with the Olympics just around the cor­ner,” said Kate Coul­tas, senior man­ag­er of media rela­tions and cor­po­rate affairs at JCPen­ney.

Accord­ing to Coul­tas, the first tweet gen­er­at­ed 15 retweets per sec­ond and the entire series of tweets ulti­mate­ly received more than 50,000 retweets. The brand also gained 8,500 fol­low­ers that night.

In addi­tion, the brand did­n’t want to wait for a spon­ta­neous real-time moment, as Oreo did in the 2013 Super bowl.

“Ulti­mate­ly, instead of try­ing to find the per­fect tweet for the per­fect moment, we essen­tial­ly cre­at­ed our own strat­e­gy. In the process, oth­er brands even draft­ed off of us to find their own moment,” she said. That includes Kia and Dori­tos.

“If you fac­tor in that the game was a slow and peo­ple were look­ing for enter­tain­ment on their sec­ond screen ­ it end­ed up being a per­fect storm,” she added.

Per Coul­tas, the ini­tia­tive gar­nered near­ly 300 mil­lion media impres­sions and an Exact­Tar­get study found JCPen­ney was the sec­ond most talked about brand on Twit­ter dur­ing the Super Bowl and the fifth most men­tioned.

“This was our first time we’ve done some­thing like this before and per­haps we would con­sid­er [it] again should it be appro­pri­ate for the sit­u­a­tion,” she said.

A Brief History Of Misdirection

This strat­e­gy is noth­ing new, accord­ing to Bri­an Har­ris, cre­ative direc­tor at adver­tis­ing agency BaM. In fact, he said so-called mis­di­rec­tion in adver­tis­ing goes back to the Mad Men era with adver­tis­ing cre­ative direc­tor William Bernbach’s infa­mous “Lemon” ad for Volk­swa­gen.

“It was shock­ing to peo­ple that a com­pa­ny would run an ad that seem­ing­ly called the prod­uct a lemon,” Har­ris said. “Of course, this tick­led the curios­i­ty of the read­er who would then read the copy to dis­cov­er that the car pic­tured above was a lemon because the inspec­tor at the fac­to­ry noticed there was a blem­ish on the glove com­part­ment, which was then fixed. The point was that they actu­al­ly had a high­er stan­dard of what ‘lemon’ meant than oth­er car man­u­fac­tur­ers.”

Fur­ther, Har­ris notes that even though this tac­tic was a suc­cess for Volk­swa­gen, it is still only used selec­tive­ly.

“Most mar­keters don’t have the stom­ach to risk rely­ing on the curios­i­ty of the read­er or view­er. Every copy­writer can tell you a sto­ry about how mar­keters gen­er­al­ly fear neg­a­tiv­i­ty in any form to the point of nev­er using words like ‘nev­er’ or ‘not’ or ‘no’ in head­lines,” he said. “Social is open­ing the doors to a more dar­ing type of mar­keter, but I wouldn’t say that there has been some sort of risk rev­o­lu­tion.”

So where does that leave brands that want to per­haps lever­age this strat­e­gy? What should they do?

Here are five insights from agency exec­u­tives.

1. Don’t Mess With Consumers Just To Mess With Them

There has to be a strat­e­gy behind the cam­paign and the cre­ative has to be top-notch.

It’s a marketer’s job to shape how con­sumers think about a brand or prod­uct, said Eric Ful­wiler, social media direc­tor at Mullen.

“That emo­tion­al path does­n’t always have to be lin­ear – you don’t have to always just tell some­one exact­ly what to think. In fact, some­times it can be more effec­tive to take them down a more inter­est­ing path with a few twists and turns,” he said. “When peo­ple fig­ure some­thing out on their own it’s much more effec­tive. And that’s not just mar­keter-speak. There are plen­ty of psy­cho­log­i­cal stud­ies out there that prove how emo­tion­al par­tic­i­pa­tion impacts mem­o­ry and asso­ci­a­tion.”

Ful­wiler goes on to call the Mon­ster post “bril­liant.”

“It pulls you in, makes you gasp in shock, then guides you to the solu­tion your­self,” he said, also point­ing to anoth­er good exam­ple in Snick­ers’ recent exten­sion of the “You’re not you when you’re hungry”-campaign with YouTube vlog­gers post­ing unchar­ac­ter­is­tic videos.

2. Do It If It Advances Your Brand Voice, POV & Purpose

That’s accord­ing to Susan Cre­dle, chief cre­ative offi­cer at Leo Bur­nett.

“If not, this tech­nique is trolling and just because you are brand does not mean it is any more accept­able,” she said.

Den­nis Claus, group direc­tor of mobile and social plat­form at R/GA, agrees brands need a spe­cif­ic goal with this tech­nique. The Mon­ster tweet was care­ful­ly designed with a clear tie to the brand mes­sage. JCPen­ney, how­ev­er, missed the mark because the 2014 Super Bowl wasn’t actu­al­ly as cold as it was expect­ed to be.

“[It] was pre­dict­ed it was going to be very cold – one of cold­est in the his­to­ry of mankind – but it was in the 50s or 60s…so it felt very unnat­ur­al when it turned out to not be cold, but they still [used mit­tens],” Claus said.

3. Stay Away From Devout Fan Bases

“If Host­ess made a joke about Zayn Malik leav­ing One Direc­tion, they would have had a full-out Twit­ter riot on their hands,” Har­ris said. “I think they felt safe with base­ball, because the aver­age fan is old­er [and] not as like­ly to be on Twit­ter and even the least knowl­edge­able sports fan knows the dif­fer­ence between touch­down and home run. It was tru­ly sur­pris­ing to see how many peo­ple took the bait and tried to cor­rect them.”

4. Find Opportunities In Trends & Events People Care About

Any trend or top­ic that peo­ple care about offers an oppor­tu­ni­ty for brands to use this approach.

While the three ear­li­er exam­ples had ties to sports, Ful­wiler said the tac­tic isn’t nec­es­sar­i­ly spe­cif­ic to sports, but rather to cul­tur­al trends or events.

How­ev­er, Claus said he doesn’t think it is a coin­ci­dence that so many exam­ples have sports ties because sports are pop­u­lar and it’s easy to make mis­takes with them.

“Peo­ple are very pas­sion­ate and so if you troll them, you’ll get a lot of response,” Claus said. “If you high­light the wrong win­ner of a chess tour­na­ment, you won’t get a response, but if you mis­name the win­ner of the Super Bowl, you’ll get back­lash.”

5. Consider The Consequences

Pur­pose­ful mis­takes cut through the noise on social, to be sure, but they don’t nec­es­sar­i­ly cre­ate rel­e­vant engage­ment. So: Don’t just look at the short-term atten­tion, but also con­sid­er the long-term impli­ca­tions, Claus said.

“It’s impor­tant with schaden­freude mar­ket­ing and troll mar­ket­ing to think beyond one day of glo­ry and to real­ly con­sid­er the con­se­quences,” he added.

What’s your take? Is it a mis­take for brands to pur­pose­ful­ly make mis­takes, or is it good mar­ket­ing?