Death Wish Coffee’s Social Media Manager Reveals The Secrets Behind Their Widely Popular Cynical Tone on Posts

When it comes to branding your company on social media, it’s important that you find a unique voice. Too many companies are still just sharing boring links and retweeting headlines. To really stand you and get attention from your audience. Your voice on social media should reflect your brand’s personality. If you don’t find it, your company will be seen as just another company pushing widgets on the internet.

Today I caught up with Sophia Abbasi, one of the voices behind Death Wish Coffee Company’s famous brand voice. I wanted to find out how they seem to always be able to say what their customers are thinking with their hilarious content.

1) How did you get started with social media at DWC?

Sophia Abbasi, Social Media Manager at Death Wish Coffee

I’m actually fairly new at Death Wish Coffee – I started in December 2019 and my background has been in nonprofit communications, public relations, and marketing. I was familiar with the brand being from the Albany, New York area after Death Wish Coffee received recognition as a growing small business from that area and won a Super Bowl commercial from Quick Books Intuit.

I got to know the brand before the product and loved the cynical, sarcastic tone of their content. When I tried their product, I knew why I loved this company.

2) Its clear DWC has a brand personality and voice that shines through on social. What can you tell us about that?

Death Wish Coffee has always had this voice externally that people can relate to. I feel like several people have a similar experience in discovering Death Wish Coffee as I did, where they found the brand really resonated with them. I think as a marketing strategy, it’s so important for people to build trust with the brands that they typically purchase from. In a way that legitimizes brands when their community is so vocally supportive.

3) One of your memes turned into a t-shirt as part of a campaign to help laid-off service industry workers. How did that happen?

This was such a fun project to work on – and gives insight into how we come up with our hilarious memes. I had said it to a friend “when this is all over, please continue to stay 6 feet away from me” while we talked about how we actually didn’t mind being away from people during quarantine, and the meme was born.

4)  DWC’s memes have become legendary across social media. What’s the secret to make memes that resonate with an audience?

Most of the time, these memes are off-the-cuff comments we make to each other or people in our lives and think, “Oh wait, that’s a meme right there!” I think Death Wish Coffee has been able to find success with memes and creative content because we have such an understanding of our audience. We have a Facebook page run by our biggest fans, with over 10,000 strong, of a community that shares their coffee-drinking experiences, Death Wish Coffee merch, and where they show love for the product and brand. We stay in touch with that community, and always make sure we celebrate them in everything we do.

5) What career advice would you give to those who would like to be a Social Media Manager?

Understanding your audience and community is key to growing your social media audience and engagement! Listen to what they have to say, create assessments to better understand them, engage with them in the comments (but try not to get caught up in the negative ones), and rely on your audience and community to create the compelling content that you’re looking for!