You probably haven’t thought much about Nutter Butter since the cookie was in your lunchbox in the third grade. However, the snack brand has taken an interesting route to regain cultural relevance.
Nutter Butter has been posting completely unhinged TikToks for weeks now. No one seems to understand the brand’s bizarre approach, but it seems to be working. People are talking about Nutter Butter again, and the account has amassed millions of video views and hundreds of thousands of followers.
We’ll just leave these Nutter Butter TikToks here for evidence:
https://www.tiktok.com/@officialnutterbutter/photo/7418316105346829601?embed_source=121374463%2C121451205%2C121439635%2C121433650%2C121404359%2C121351166%2C72778571%2C121331973%2C120811592%2C120810756%3Bnull%3Bembed_masking&refer=embed&referer_url=www.fastcompany.com%2F91193826%2Fnutter-butter-tiktok-marketing-strategy&referer_video_id=7413475577790778656
“Umm nutter butter… you good?” a fan wrote in the comments.
“I need a Netflix documentary on the Nutter Butter lore,” another wrote.
Even fellow brands have chimed in on the conversation. “Bestie we’re really concerned,” Pinterest said. “Blink twice if you need help,” Arby’s said.
TikToker Cassie Fitzwater made her own viral video asking Nutter Butter if they were okay.
“If you guys have not seen Nutter Butter’s official account on here, I need you to stop what you’re doing and go look at it, because I had to, and I think you should, too,” she said in the post. “I’m concerned. Nutter Butter, are you guys okay? Are you doing alright?”
The cookie brand’s Twitter is equally questionable.
It includes random “help” tweets and other comments that simply don’t make any sense. It feels like we’re missing a lot of context. “ALONE,” one simply reads, while another says, “I understand.”
And while no one can’t seem to make any sense of it, that’s kind of the point. We got in touch with Nutter Butter to ask what was going on.
“Nutter Butter embraces its nuttiness, departing from a perfectly curated feed to experiment with the surreal side of the internet,” a spokesperson for the brand told Delish. “Our social channels create a realm of extreme absurdity and deep lore by going where no other cookie has gone before. Follow us as we push the boundaries of creativity to take you on unexpected adventures.”
Nutter Butter may have people talking, but this absurdist social strategy isn’t exactly new. Food companies have been getting weird online for a while now as a way to attract a Gen Z audience that was not previously engaged with the brand. Steak-umms was dropping truth-bombs about coronavirus misinformation in 2020, Popeyes has trolled its competitors, and Vita Coco’s social media manager was peeing in jars. Nutter Butter’s TikToks are looking less and less insane, now that we think about it.
Megan Schaltegger is an NYC-based writer. She loves strong coffee, eating her way through the Manhattan food scene, and her dog, Murray. She promises not to talk about herself in third person IRL.