Corporate Banter and the Cost of Insensitivity

Social media has changed the way organisations speak to the public. If corporate communication was once synonymous with formal language, official releases, and highly controlled statements, organisations are now required to be faster, more fluid, and closer to their audiences. Corporate social media accounts no longer function merely as digital bulletin boards. They have become conversational spaces, where organisations greet, reply to comments, follow trends, and even joke with the public. This shift has given rise to an increasingly casual communication style. Many brands try to appear like peers to their audiences. They use memes, everyday language, spontaneous comments, and a witty style to seem human. In digital communication practice, this approach is often called brand banter, a communication style that uses humour, spontaneity, and familiarity to build engagement with the public. Strategically, brand banter is not wrong. In a very crowded social media landscape, overly formal corporate language often fails to attract attention. The public, especially the younger generation, responds more easily to accounts that feel lively, witty, and understand platform culture. Because of this, many brands have begun abandoning one-way communication styles and are trying to build a more casual digital persona. However, the problem always comes back to one thing: not all organisations have the same room to joke. Humour that works for snack, beauty, entertainment, or fashion brands is not necessarily suitable for organisations operating in strategic sectors, public services, health, safety, energy, finance, or even products related to death. The more sensitive the sector a brand touches, the greater the public’s demand for empathy, caution, and decency in its communication. The buzz around Pertamina’s official Threads account can be read from this angle. Based on circulating documentation of public conversations, the official account is managed with an admin persona named ‘Mina’ who uses a casual, witty language style close to Gen Z culture. One of the most highlighted posts was an invitation to promote MSMEs in the comments section with the sentence, ‘Mina will help with the strength of these 10 durable fingers.’ The post was busy, gained significant attention, but also sparked critical responses and satirical comments from some netizens. On the surface, the post seemed light. It did not attack anyone. It contained no extreme statements. Nor was it aggressively selling something. However, on social media, the problem often does not stop at what is written. It extends to who is writing, when the message appears, and what the organisation behind the account is currently carrying. The problem is not solely because the admin was joking. The problem lies in the mismatch between the communication style, the timing of delivery, and the way the public interprets the persona being built. A casual and witty communication style can actually be understood as an effort to bring the institution closer to a digital audience. However, this style becomes problematic when used by an organisation that is carrying a reputational burden and is under public scrutiny. In a proximate period, Pertamina was also part of public conversations related to a number of trust issues, ranging from news about crude oil and fuel governance, complaints from some consumers about fuel quality, to criticism of services. In such a situation, the public is not just waiting for engaging content. The public also needs explanations, empathy, and signs of seriousness from the organisation. So, when a corporate account appears too light-hearted, part of the public may read it as insensitivity, even if the original intention was merely to build closeness. Another example is seen in a post by a brand selling products related to shrouds and funeral supplies. In circulating screenshots, the account addressed a healthcare service and hospital account with a joking tone, asking that patients who ‘can no longer be handled’ be given to them, then closed with an invitation to ‘share the fortune’ and ‘support each other’. Technically, the post may have been intended as dark humour. However, because it touched on issues of patients, hospitals, death, and family suffering, the message was easily read as a joke that crossed the line of decency. At this point, humour loses its safe space. Death, illness, and grief are not just communication themes. For many people, they are personal experiences that still leave trauma. From these two examples, it is clear that the main problem in digital communication is not simply whether a post is funny or not. The problem is deeper, namely whether the humour aligns with the brand identity, the type of industry, the social conditions, and the public’s moral expectations. The same humour might be accepted if it came from a personal account, but becomes problematic when delivered by a corporate account. This is because the public reads a brand account not as an individual casually joking, but as an official representation of an organisation.