Did you think Mark Zuckerberg accepted Elon Musk’s cage fight challenge only because he loves jiu-jitsu? Marketing experts think otherwise. They say Musk, who among other things owns Twitter, may have started it but Zuckerberg taking the bait looks like a calculated move to create a buzz around Threads, the Twitter rival launched on Instagram, owned by Meta, of which Zuckerberg is CEO.
The social media banter between the two tech giant owners generated widespread media coverage and social media chatter, and it’s likely that this helped to drive awareness of Threads to a wider audience. The organic sharing of memes by netizens and influencers alike only helped Zuckerberg’s case.
It all started in mid-June when Musk took to Twitter to respond to random tweets on the launch of Threads. Netizens kept reacting to the tweet. One thing led to another and Musk finally said, ‘I am up for a cage fight if he is lol’, to which Zuckerberg replied in three brief words on his Instagram story: ‘Send me location.’
And the meme wars began.
“While it initially started off as a humorous and unintentional exchange, Mark Zuckerberg actively responding to it makes it evident that he understood the impact it is generating, as it has sparked numerous discussions. If you browse through threads and social media platforms, you’ll find an abundance of memes and discussions revolving around Zuckerberg, Elon Musk, Twitter and Threads. Regardless of individual opinions, it is undeniable that these interactions are fuelling conversations,” said Hitarth Dadia, chief marketing officer and partner, Nofiltr.Group, an influencer management and marketing firm.
“It seems to be a fortunate coincidence,” Dadia added.
Meta is a master of social media marketing, and they’ve shown that they’re willing to think outside the box to get people talking about their products. The Zuckerberg-Musk cage match challenge was a risky move, but it paid off in spades. No wonder Meta has been dominating the digital marketing space.
Shubham Singhal, co-founder and CEO, Dot Media, a marketing firm, agreed. He said, “You know what they say, there’s no such thing as bad publicity. If you think about it, that’s fantastic work ‘thread’ing the needle to create a buzz that happened to garner 10 million users in 7 hours!”
Vivek Das, CEO, FoxyMoron, a digital agency that is part of Zoo Media, however has a different perspective. While he thinks the launch of Threads is straight out of Meta’s playbook of taking what the competition does and trying to better it, the proposed cage fight between Zuckerberg and Musk is anything but conventional for either of them.
“At this point one can only speculate what this ‘hype marketing’ tactic is all about. Could it be that the two decided that the world is big enough for both and use this to drive a supposed rivalry between Twitter fans and early adopters of Threads (and Twitter haters), thus pushing simultaneous uptake? Or could it be that all this leads to them eventually joining hands to have one dominant product in the market? In either case, it has got both consumers and marketers interested and in that context. It’s working,” said Das.
Whether the two decided to stage the fight is not known but what is known is that Threads is winning hearts. Digital marketers are not just applauding the build-up for Threads but also the functionality of the app.
It’s hard to say for sure whether Zuckerberg’s challenge was a deliberate attempt to generate buzz, but it’s clear that it worked. Threads has been downloaded over 1 million times since its launch on July 6, and it’s already starting to gain traction among users.