Cassie Fitzwater hadn’t thought about Nutter Butter in years — until she saw the brutal crime scene photos.
A post on TikTok showing the home of a peanut-butter-cookie family smeared in peanut butter gore — the aftermath of a double cookie homicide — left Ms. Fitzwater, 31, of Summersville, W.Va., “disturbed” and in “disbelief,” she said.
Another recent video shows Nutter Butter cookies dancing as images of cats flood the screen and a distorted voice chants about the cookie. Another, simply a shrimp being placed on top of a peanut-butter cookie to an applause soundtrack.
In what feels like a cross between a Van Gogh painting, a ’90s MTV commercial and a rendition of a psychedelic trip, the sandwich-cookie company’s social media pages have caused a stir in recent months. Are they funny, disturbing, or cutting edge? Yes.
After watching the crime-scene cookie video, Ms. Fitzwater posted a video asking what many TikTok users have wondered: “Nutter Butter, you good??” The corporation responded with a clip of Nutter Butters with creepy human smiles. “Are we OK? Depend. YES YES YES” flashed across the screen while the cookies danced over flames and a collage of backgrounds.
Whatever they’re doing, it seems to be working: The 10 videos posted to Nutter Butter’s TikTok page in September have more than 87 million views, and the account has more than a million followers.
Three people who are behind some of the content spoke to The New York Times over Zoom recently: Kelly Amatangelo, a marketing strategist for Mondelez, the Chicago-based snack food company that owns Nutter Butter; Caitlin Bolmarcich, the brand manager for Nutter Butter; and Zach Poczekaj, a social media manager for Dentsu Creative, the marketing agency that manages Nutter Butter’s accounts.
“If a piece of content makes too much sense, it doesn’t perform as well,” Mr. Poczekaj said. “So it should even be a little confusing to us at times, too.”
This interview has been edited and condensed for length and clarity.
You started posting on TikTok in 2020, but there were long stretches when your videos did not reach large audiences. Was it difficult to get management to trust the process, and that these weird videos would pay off?
KELLY AMATANGELO Not at all. It was a commitment to what we know works best with our consumers and continuing to experiment. And then at the end of ’23, beginning of ’24, it felt like something that was driving a cult following.
ZACH POCZEKAJ It all starts at this phrase that we say: Commit to the bit.
Nutter Butters with human tongues and teeth; dancing Nutter Butters overlaid on cats and bicycles; fresh shrimp on top of a Nutter Butter. How do you guys come up with this stuff?
AMATANGELO It’s very with the gut. There’s not a lot of planning. That’s where we get the best result. There’s not white pages of concepts and story boards and going frame by frame. Because then you lose the lure and the magic that sparked that idea to begin with.
POCZEKAJ Where it starts is we’re just looking at the comments from the previous week and trying to identify: Are people responding to this specific character in the “Nutterverse”? Which is what we call it. We really study those comments, because we want to put it back into the content that week.
Give me an example.
POCZEKAJ One comment we were getting a lot in 2024 was:
The dreams:”
So we were trying to tap into: What is a Nutter Butter’s fever dream?
It’s sort of this surrealist, subliminal rabbit hole that people can fall into as they may, and then they stick around for the lore.
What about the video with the anonymous interview — in which a silhouette appears and a deep, altered voice seems to begin to apologize for the account’s posts before the video cuts to dancing peanuts and strobe lights? That has over 12 million views.
POCZEKAJ That character is Mr. 1021, and he sort of morphed into the Nutter Butter Man. It’s not a clear answer. If a piece of content makes too much sense, it doesn’t perform as well. So it should even be a little confusing to us at times, too, because that’s fun, and it keeps the story moving.
How old are the people in the room who are designing these posts?
POCZEKAJ I’m 27.
The video that resonated with Cassie was the murder house —
AMATANGELO Haunted house. We should say murder house. That wasn’t the intention.
Haunted house. How did that video come about?
POCZEKAJ One of our strategies is called “peanut butter overload.” When we show lots of peanut butter, it weirdly elicits indirect taste appeal. We will get comments like, “This made me want a Nutter Butter.” So we thought the dollhouse would be a vehicle to show a lot of peanut butter.
You have this character named Aidan featured in a lot of posts. Who is Aidan?
POCZEKAJ Aidan was a superfan of Nutter Butter and commented his name on all of our posts starting in 2023. Aidan actually became a social media intern at Dentsu Creative and is now a full-time associate social media manager.
CAITLIN BOLMARCICH We started planting Easter eggs in the content with the word Aidan, and it really took people on a frenzy of: Who is Aidan? Am I Aidan? Are you Aidan? And we’ve really played into that. Like Taylor Swift’s Easter eggs.
[Aidan was not available for an interview.]
Who else is in the Nutterverse? Who’s the guy with the crazy hair who kind of looks like Willy Wonka?
POCZEKAJ You might be thinking about the Nutter Butter Man, who actually comes from a Nutter Butter commercial from the 1970s.
Another character is Nadia — Aidan spelled backward. Who is that?
POCZEKAJ That’s a secret.
Why is the only person that you follow the Miami rapper Pitbull?
BOLMARCICH That’s a secret.
There’s a line you have to toe where corporate accounts can’t seem like they are trying too hard or else it comes off as cringey. Where is that line?
POCZEKAJ Our audience is so extremely online, and they like when we defy the norms of normal brand social media accounts. It entertains them, and they ask for it. It’s something that they genuinely enjoy. It’s fun.
Last question. You good?
POCZEKAJ We’re good.
AMATANGELO When this group gets together, there is a lot of laughter, a lot of fun and a lot of happiness. It’s not as serious. There is a bigger intention. But in the end, it’s just a lot of fun.
The strategy — a mixture of fun, strange, go with your gut and don’t make too much sense — worked like a charm on at least one customer.
“I actually went out and bought some after it,” Ms. Fitzwater said. “I love Nutter Butters. I forgot about them, but after I bought them, I was like, ‘Oh, these are good.’”
The post A Haunted House, Psychedelic Cats and Shrimp: Inside Nutter Butter’s Fever Dream appeared first on New York Times.
