Why Your Brand Needs a Middle Finger

_{Day 92/100}

Hey—It's Tim.

Quick experiment.

Close one eye. (You still need to read the next line…)
and imagine the marketing world is a nightclub.

The Colas are hogging VIP,
Burger King’s outside vaping,
Salesforce is on the mezzanine lecturing strangers about “360-degree views,”
HubSpot is by the bathrooms handing out free lead magnets,
Mailchimp - full mascot suit - sprinkling discount codes like confetti,
Slack has commandeered the smokers’ area for “a quick huddle,”
and someone from Oracle just asked the DJ for ABBA because “the crowd’ll love it.”

Your brand walks in.
Two choices:

1. Smile, wave, hope the line moves.

2. March straight past the velvet rope, flip the bouncer your best “try me,” and carve a dance-floor circle so wide everyone has to notice.

Most choose Option 1, because it feels professional.
Option 2 is F*ck-You Marketing.

This newsletter is “Writing Wednesday.”
But today I’d rather file it under “Why are we all still whispering?”

What the middle finger actually means

We’re not here just to flip people off for fun… As fun as that can be, there are consequences to that.

I learnt that the hard way in my teens.

This is more a declaration of who you refuse to be.

• Cola Wars (Pepsi’s Taste Test) – “We’re not the flavourless incumbent.”

• Avis vs Hertz (We’re #2, We Try Harder) – “We don’t coast on size.”

• Liquid Death® – “We’re water, but we’ll murder your thirst.”

Each line isn’t selling a feature; it’s selling a worldview.
Agree and you’re in the club. Disagree and - great - one less person blocking the bar.

Psychologists call this optimal distinctiveness: humans crave belonging and differentiation.
Say “F*ck You” correctly and you scratch both itches at once.

Why F*ck-You Marketing is (almost) for everyone

1. Boring is invisible, invisibility is death
   Google indexes 10 billion pages. None say “Boo!” louder than the rest.

2. Neediness repels
   “We’re the best” begs for proof. “We’re unlike anything you’ve tried” invites curiosity.

3. Human brains hoard stories
   My dad remembers Coca-Cola’s Santa from 1996, not their calorie count. We’re wired for narrative, not spec sheets.

4. Different scales up
   Once your quirk punches through, spin-offs become effortless: merch, memes, community slogans. Ask Liquid Death how many T-shirts they sell.

5. Safety costs the same as danger
   You already burned the budget. Might as well get remembered.

Come back to the dance floor with me for one more song?

Safe marketing is a polite nod in a crowded club:
“Hey, I exist, whenever you’re free, perhaps glance my way.”

F*ck-You Marketing struts in, jumps on a speaker, and yells:
“Song’s rubbish. Mine’s better. Watch this.”

Shock → attention → loyalty loop.
You know the theory. You just read 600 words of it.

Let’s break some extra glass.

A few observations from the wild

1. It installs narrative, not comparison
   Apple rarely names Samsung. Samsung names Apple every quarter and still looks needy.
   Heroes don’t joust competitors; they joust concepts (“closed gardens,” “boring PCs”).

2. Underdog framing beats stat-sheet flexing
   Dollar Shave Club didn’t out-engineer Gillette; it roasted the absurdity of paying $37 for fifteen blades and a vibrating handle.
   

3. Us vs. Them beats ‘I’m better’
   Avis: “We’re #2, we try harder.”
   Hertz can’t clap back without looking lazy.
   Better feels needy. Different feels inevitable.
   

4. Odd detail = memory glue
   Oatly’s carton copy reads like a diary entry from a sarcastic cow.
   Irrelevant to oat milk’s viscosity. Unforgettable nonetheless.
   

5. Permission-Fuelled Swagger
   BrewDog calls itself “craft beer for punks,” then sues rival “Draft Punk.”
   Hypocritical? Maybe. Memorable? Also maybe.
   

6. Villains create gravity
   Patagonia’s villain is over-consumption (“Don’t buy this jacket”).
   Every sale feels like activism; customers become accomplices, not shoppers.
   

7. Visual profanity works too
   Supreme slaps an obscene red rectangle on bricks, crowbars, Oreos.
   The word isn’t “f*ck,” but the pricing strategy is.

What I wish I could get away with

I run Penfriend.ai, an AI content SaaS trying to keep the humans alive when the robots take over..

Owning the company = a cheat code.
My co-founders gave me the keys and a wink that said, “Just don’t burn it down.”
Still, even I chicken out half the time.

My fantasies include:

• Homepage hero: “Google doesn’t rank beige. Un-beige your blog.”

• Onboarding tooltip: “Write like a person or close the tab.”

• Churn email: “Leaving? Cool. Your competitors thank you.”

Here’s the dream list taped above my desk:

Belief under all of this: Respect is attention times candour.
I’d rather be blunt and slept on than glossy and scrolled past.

One day.

OK, philosopher-king, how do I keep my job?

(A six-step blueprint you can screen-shot for when Legal* shows up.)

*Not actual legal advice. God forbid…

Tonight’s homework (spelled out)

1. Pick one vanilla headline
   Example: “Seamless team collaboration made easy.”

2. Rewrite three ways

   • Mild: “Stop emailing files to yourself.”

   • Spicy: “Your workflow called. It’s stuck in 2009.”

   • Nuclear: “If your project lives in spreadsheets, it deserves to die there.”

3. Choose the spicy version (middle).
   Trust me. It tingles, doesn’t burn.

4. Slip it somewhere tiny
   Tooltip, exit pop, footer link. Give it 72 hours.

5. Track one metric
   Click-through, dwell time, replies ➡️ any uptick = ammo for bigger swings.

6. Tell me
   Hit reply next week with your best war story. I’ll feature the bravest in Friday’s “Marketer Mug-shot Hall of Fame.”

Polite brands whisper into hurricanes.
“F*ck-You” brands sell umbrellas and livestream the storm.

Everybody can’t go.

✌️ Tim "If you get invited to a surprise meeting with HR, lose this number" Hanson
CMO @Penfriend.ai

Same brain, different platforms: X, Threads, LinkedIn.

P.S. Irony check: I’m typing this in my usual beige hoodie.

Proof you can wear beige and still write like a riot.
If you hit reply with the blandest line of copy you’ve seen this week, I’ll roast it in Saturday’s newsletter... and send you ice cream for how vanilla you once were.

Penfriend.ai
Made by content marketers. Used by better ones.