Nutter Butter embraces TikTok brain rot, MrBeast rips off Lunchables, and PayPal ditches its blue logo

This week in the branding world, Nutter Butter’s deeply weird TikToks went viral, MrBeast and Logan Paul duped Lunchables, and PayPal traded in its blue logo. Here’s everything you need to know. [Images: Nutter Butter] Nutter Butter goes surreal The news: Nutter Butter, the tasty cookie beloved by the whole family since 1969, has a recent TikTok that’s been flagged for sensitive content. To someone who hasn’t checked out the page in a while, that might seem like a mistake by the algorithm—but once you’ve scrolled through a couple of the brand’s recent posts, it becomes clear that it’s definitely not. That’s because Nutter Butter has started wholeheartedly marketing to Gen Z and Gen Alpha on TikTok with a slew of videos that range from surreal and disgusting to downright disturbing. Big picture: Nutter Butter’s strategy is something that I’ll term here as the “brain rot-ification” of consumer packaged goods, or CPG, marketing. Brain rot as a slang term refers to the worsened condition of the brain after watching too many TikToks, but it can also define a certain genre of content that basically mashes together an unrelated slurry of images and sounds. It’s difficult to describe what Nutter Butter’s TikToks look like, but one example is “a Nutter Butter takes a trip to the playground on way too much acid.” Contrary to the typical CPG marketing approach, this strategy doesn’t make Nutter Butters look tasty at all—in fact, it’s just plain creepy. What it does, though, is rack up lots of views through sheer shock value. Why it matters: Strangely enough, Nutter Butter’s TikTok is one of the most with-the-times brand accounts I’ve seen, probably because the current dominant genre of TikTok humor requires a level of irreverence and absurdity that other brands aren’t willing to commit to. Numbers-wise, it’s working: Plenty of the brand’s top videos have close to 150,000 likes. But am I ever going to be able to unsee that Nutter Butter family standing outside their peanut-butter-smeared house? Definitely not.  [Photo: Lunchly] MrBeast’s Lunchables dupe The news: Early this week, YouTubers Logan Paul, KSI, and MrBeast announced Lunchly, a series of boxed meal kits billed as a healthier alternative to Lunchables.  Big picture: First and foremost, Lunchly is essentially a glorified billboard for its three founders to market their existing CPG endeavors. Every box comes with a Prime energy drink, cocreated by Paul and KSI, as well as a Feastables chocolate bar, courtesy of MrBeast’s Willy Wonka-style chocolate company. The brand launch also plays into the recent resurgence of ’90s products and aesthetics. The upshot, though, is that Lunchly has generally been poorly received on the internet, with users commenting that the ingredients seem less than stellar.  Why it matters: Health considerations aside, Lunchly just simply does not look good—and that’s not helping its case. The food photography makes every meal look meager and bland, the brand’s main font choice is an eyesore, and the Prime and Feastables on the packaging look like a hasty Photoshop job. With more attention to branding, Lunchly could’ve brought back some ’90s vibes with a modernized twist (that’s if Little Spoon hadn’t already beat them to it back in 2023). Instead, it just looks like a sad dupe of a childhood favorite. [Image: courtesy Pentagram] PayPal goes black The news: After more than 20 years, PayPal is swapping its quintessential blue logo for an ultra-simple black sans-serif font.  Big picture: The new logo is part of a brand refresh spearheaded by Pentagram partner Andrea Trabucco-Campos. It includes a more modernized color palette, a slightly tweaked monogram, and updated motion graphics that mimic mobile pay behaviors like flipping, tapping, and swiping. The most crucial change is the wordmark, which has been blue since the company’s inception. Why it matters: Reactions to the new look have been lukewarm. Some X users posit that such a change was inevitable, given the simplified logos at companies like Microsoft and Google, while others are passionately opposed to it. (“Graphic design is illegal now I think,” one user wrote.) Ultimately, the choice boils down to PayPal’s need to stand out in the fintech space, where bright blue has become the color of choice for countless other companies vying to distance themselves from their traditional bank counterparts. Need to catch up on branding news? Read last week’s roundup.