Sydney Airport is beefing with Sopha Dopha over gluten-free toast. Not lost luggage, not delays, but toast. After the influencer complained on TikTok about struggling to find gluten-free options at the airport, Sydney Airport responded using her own sound to showcase the options available across its terminals. But in this case, it didn’t land, and so the internet did what the internet does. Sure, some loved the clapback. The majority, however, questioned why an airport was publicly sparring with a customer in the first place about….toast. Whether you think the response was funny, justified or wildly inappropriate, I think those in the social industry should be asking a more uncomfortable question: isn’t this exactly what we’ve spent years asking brands to become? Be reactive. Have a personality. Move at the speed of culture. Don’t sound corporate. Entertain us. Act like a creator. Embrace the toast! These behaviours work because they earn the most precious commodity on social, attention. And attention matters. Without it, there is no opportunity to build recognition or memory in the first place. But have we become so good at getting people to look that we’ve stopped asking what they see when they do?
Sydney Airport isn’t alone. There’s a broader energy from brands moving from simply participating in internet culture to adopting the behaviours of the people who create it. I’m talking clapbacks, trolling, rage bait, beef — and even some toast to go with that beef. The US Transportation Security Administration (TSA) wasn’t shy in clappingback at World Cup visitors who smuggled ranch dressing through airport security. And that isn’t inherently a bad thing. Attention and recognition aren’t competing objectives; the best social builds both. Attention is what gets someone to stop scrolling in the first place, giving the brand an opportunity to become recognisable and, ultimately, memorable. The Sydney Airport case is interesting because it raises the question of what happens when that balance tips too far towards attention — when generating comments becomes the strategy, rather than the mechanism that gives the brand an opportunity to build something bigger. Because getting people to look is only half the job. Once you have their attention, what are you teaching them to remember about you?
At WiredCo., we think that brands win on social when they aren’t reinventing themselves every Tuesday because the algorithm found a new personality. They’re becoming unmistakably recognisable through the consistency of one brand idea. The uncomfortable part for most social people is repetition. Social teams get bored long before audiences do, so brands refresh, reinvent and move on just as recognition is beginning to build. We practice the opposite with our social strategies; one consistent social idea that compounds over time, but also flexible enough to respond to culture in a uniquely branded way. So yes, stop the scroll. Get people talking. Beef with an influencer over gluten-free toast if that genuinely belongs in your brand world. But if you’re in doubt, maybe the lesson here is that attention gets you noticed, consistency makes sure they know who they noticed.
