Mandela Effect, But Make It Marketing: Fruit of the Loom’s Memory Glitch Strategy
What if the most powerful piece of your branding… never actually existed?
That was the existential brain worm we planted when Fruit of the Loom went all-in on the Mandela Effect—that weird collective memory that everyone has of the Fruit logo featuring a cornucopia (spoiler: it didn’t). But instead of correcting the internet, we let it spiral. On purpose.
This campaign wasn’t just a nod to internet culture—it was a masterclass in playful misdirection, tapping into a cultural truth: sometimes we remember the feeling of a brand more than the brand itself. As one of the creatives behind the campaign voice, I got to walk a fine line between fan theory and brand truth, crafting copy that wove conspiracies into copywriting gold.
And we didn’t stop at memes. We leaned into visual gags, dropped faux archival easter eggs, and let TikTok detectives run wild. The result? Comment threads blew up. People posted their childhood shirts. One guy claimed he saw the cornucopia in a dream. Mission. Accomplished.
Fruit of the Loom’s Mandela Effect campaign proved that being “off-brand” can sometimes be the most on-brand thing you can do—especially when you’ve got the nerve to roll with it.
