It’s no secret that AI “slop” is taking over the internet, prompting many internet users to look for actual human insights. For now, that often means adding “Reddit” to the end of Google search queries.
Reddit, which operates as a collection of forums for people to engage with topics ranging from TV shows to relationship advice, has reported growth in overall users and time spent on the platform since going public last year, and search traffic seems to be playing a big role in that growth. Executives have previously described the relationship between the platform and the search engine as “symbiotic.”
“People are getting tired of algorithms, they’re getting tired of AI-generated content and things like that,” Rob Gaige, director of global insights at Reddit, told us. “We’re giving them a real human platform, a place where they can connect with other people.”
There’s just one challenge: brands have been a bit slow to embrace the platform, perhaps due in part to Reddit’s reputation as a place where users are not exactly welcoming—and sometimes outright hostile—to sponsored content. It’s a perception the platform has sought to overcome as it rolls out new ad tools and continues to court advertisers. In a March report from eMarketer, Reddit’s ad revenues were found to be growing faster YoY than other social platforms, even though its overall share of social ad spend, as well as its revenue projections for the year, remain smaller. There’s a lot of room for improvement: as of December, 93% of brands in the Americas were not posting on Reddit in any capacity, per data intelligence platform Meltwater.
For brands that have chosen to use Reddit, some told us that the community insights and engagement as well as existing uncertainties on other social media sites make it worth diving into—as long as they approach the platform with care.
Breaking news
Dove’s social team decided to lean into Reddit’s old slogan as the “front page of the internet” for news when marketing its body care collab with Crumbl cookies in December. The brand reached out to moderators in subreddits like r/BeautyGuruChatter before a member posted its collab announcement as a “leak” to engage the existing fandom, Kalie Dobrow, a VP of social strategy at Edelman who worked on the campaign, told us.
“What we saw when we were digging into the background of Crumbl a little bit more, is that there are some really dedicated accounts, particularly on Reddit, who are sharing upcoming [Crumbl cookie menu] flavors on a weekly basis, and they’re actually leaking them out,” Dobrow said. “We ended up putting that into our strategy to kind of mimic that user behavior.”
Dropping the collab news created a “snowball effect,” she said, as more people reacted to and shared the news with their own communities. Redditors weren’t paid to post, but they were rewarded in other ways: the team offered some users products from the collab. Giving Redditors the chance to share an exclusive was added motivation, Dobrow said.
“We got their permission and buy-in and excitement, and it allowed them to feel like they were part of the campaign with us, versus just a brand coming in and taking over their space,” she said, adding that “allowing the moderators to tell you what works for their community is really important.”
The Reddit leak strategy ended up driving more daily impressions than past Dove campaign announcements, Dobrow said. Other brands like Bonobos and Shake Shack have also recently run Reddit campaigns that they say drove online and in-store traffic.
Ask me anything
The agency VML has worked with the Navy on its Reddit strategy since 2018, and in that time has experimented with a variety of strategies to boost recruitment and community engagement, Ryan Blum, VML’s chief creative officer, told us. Central to the approach is holding regular AMAs (which stands for “ask me anything”) where users can ask sailors questions about anything, like topics ranging from boot camp to being a parent.
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“There’s a trust factor on Reddit—maybe people believe there’s less BS on there than there is on some of the other social channels,” Blum told us. “It’s like-minded people talking about things that interest them.”
Enlistment and service can be a charged topic, and Blum said there’s always a risk of receiving negative comments, but he said that in his experience, it’s not any more common on Reddit than other platforms. To keep posts a “safe space, if you will, for people to have open and honest conversations,” Blum said his team does not jump into the comments section outside of AMAs, but it does put paid marketing budgets behind AMAs to further amplify them. Brands like Nordstrom and skin-care brand Stratia have found success with being more involved in their subreddits by answering users’ questions.
Blum said the Navy will occasionally experiment with new methods on the platform, as it did with a recent activation called “Sub Reddit Hunt,” in which clues and challenges were hidden across different subreddits in a scavenger hunt–style game designed to “attract the next generation of submariners.”
“We would have never been able to do that had we not been on Reddit and built the trust of Redditors that we had over the years,” he said.
Can’t beat ’em, join ’em?
Even if a brand’s not officially on Reddit, chances are it’s still being talked about on the platform. According to Reddit’s internal data, 40% of Reddit posts mention products or brands. “Whether brands are paying for advertising on Reddit or not, we could probably sit here and go on Reddit and type in 100 brands, and certainly there are subreddits about every one of them,” Blum said.
That’s not necessarily a bad thing, according to Dobrow: “If a brand hasn’t explored Reddit yet, the easiest, low-lift thing to do is to start using it for your audience insights and social listening,” she said. “There’s so much interesting data out there on Reddit and so many interesting sound bites from users potentially talking about your brand.”
For brands looking to join the conversation, Gaige said it helps to read subreddits for content and also for language. “It’s really smart to learn about the culture and the norms of those different subreddit communities so that you can, as much as possible, meet them where they are,” he said. “It could be as simple as just learning some of the vernacular.”
Gaige’s biggest piece of advice is to seek to add value instead of just selling a product. The best marketing, he said, often comes across as endemic to the conversation.
As one Redditor recently put it regarding brands’ marketing on the platform, “If they did it right, you’ll never know.”