The “Unhinged” Drama

Alright, so now that we know what we’re dealing with and backed it up by science – shall we have that cuppa?

How it started

Jack Appleby is a social media marketer with his own email newsletter, Future Social, and over 50,000 subscribers. And when it comes to his opinion on social media marketing, he likes to air it out.

It began when Jack posted this on LinkedIn:

Dig deeper? Ok well, we got to the science behind it…

Naturally, Duolingo saw this and their Global Social Media Manager, Zaria Parvez, had something to say:

Of course then, Jack was in lowkey crisis mode:

It wasn’t until Zaria Parvez posted Duolingo’s Q2 Shareholder Report that we heard anything else:

She left it at that… Jack Appleby didn’t:

As much as he’s ready for it to end, he couldn’t stop.
Also, he brought it up?

How it’s going 

In Appleby’s own blog on the matter, he made some good points, but it seemed like an opportunity for him to use his newsletter as a venting station to finalize his thoughts.

And while I respect Jack as a thought leader and for using his platform to vocalize his beliefs, it’s giving somewhat “antiquated.”

He made sure to incorporate some Duolingo damage control too:

But I wasn’t expecting him to contradict himself…

When he mentions Duolingo, Jack says: “No social voice or strategy is one size fits all—that’s especially true of unhinged. It can work! It can also flop hard!” and “Sure sounds like it’s working for them!”

Really, it just sounds like he put out something he didn’t know would be controversial and then backtracked so as to not piss off Zaria Parvez and Duolingo’s MASSIVE fan base more than he already had.

Because by the end of the same blog, he says this:

How can you say that unhinged marketing works for some but that no one should try it?! Illogical.

Anyways, that’s the tea.

My information gap has been triggered: where do YOU stand on “unhinged” social media marketing? 

 Alexis is the social media manager for Edify Content, a B2B SaaS content marketing agency. She graduated from the Florida State University in 2015 with a degree in Psychology and additional academic focus in Hospitality.  She continues to use both disciplines daily tied with a little bit of good-natured banter and personal experience to influence her marketing efforts from a unique perspective. For more insights into the psychology of social media, connect with Alexis on Twitter and LinkedIn.