💬 QUOTED: “ive got the long legs all i need is the dadddddy.”

Like Wednesday Addams on the dance floor, Dunkin’s marketing team spent this Halloween being unhinged. In the weeks leading up to the spooky holiday, the company released a series of posts on X, TikTok, and Instagram (above) of a spider on a doughnut set against edgy, sometimes sexually suggestive, comments.

With the move, the chain beloved by East Coasters becomes the latest company to experiment with “unhinged” marketing, which contains a tinge of edge and irreverence designed to be humorous – basically the antithesis of the buttoned-up, corporate PR speak of old.

• This marketing strategy was spearheaded around a decade ago by Wendy’s, who leaned into Twitter clapbacks. Ryanair and Scrub Daddy quickly followed suit.
• In recent years, more brands have leaned into unhinged marketing, including Nutter Butter and Duolingo (s/o Duo, you sly dog, you🦉).

When done right, it can be effective. Zaria Parvez single-handedly grew Duolingo’s TikTok from 50,000 to 5 million followers using this strategy – and with a team, further scaled the account to 13+ million. This translated into real business results: between 2022-2023, the company’s daily active app users grew 62%.

🌳 STAT OF THE DAY: A quaking aspen tree in Utah named Pando is between 16,000–80,000 years old, making it one of the oldest known organisms on Earth, per a newly published study based on DNA samples. Pando, whose name means “I spread” in Latin, consists of a vast root system connected to 47,000 individual trees spread across ~106 acres. Because of the way aspens reproduce, Pando is technically all one tree supported by a single gigantic root system, with its combined ~13 million pounds of organic matter ranking as the largest organism ever found.

🤔 DID YOU KNOW? Permanent daylight saving time (aka more sunlight in winter evenings vs. mornings) was briefly enacted by President Nixon in 1974 – but the law was reversed after only a year due to its widespread unpopularity.

📰 WORTH A READ: Many retailers offer “returnless refunds.” Just don’t expect them to talk much about it → (Associated Press)