What Dove, Netflix, and Nike Didn’t Do on Reddit Is Why They’re Winning

Brands are rethinking the traditional social media playbook, trading reach for credibility as they look to crack Reddit.

The shift comes as the 21-year-old platform draws renewed interest from marketers, driven by a mix of user growth, ad demand, and its growing role in shaping how content surfaces in search and AI-generated answers.

Onstage at ADWEEK’S Social Media Week, Reddit’s global head of insights Rob Gaige laid out how brands like Netflix, Dove, Nike, and Philadelphia Cream Cheese are finding traction, often by doing less. 

“If you post more than three times a week, your brand sentiment falls off a cliff,” Gaige said, citing internal research. “Reddit was never built around the people you know. It was built around what people say.”

That distinction is forcing brands to rethink how they show up. Unlike other platforms, Reddit doesn’t reward follower graphs or algorithmic reach.

“It all starts at zero,” Gaige said. “It is not about who’s following you. It is about how good your contribution is to the community.”

Philadelphia Cream Cheese offered one example of how brands are adapting to those norms. When a user known as “ChiveLord” went viral for documenting daily attempts to perfect chopped chives, the instinct on other platforms might have been to replicate the trend.

Instead, the brand took a lighter approach, referencing the moment in an ad: “Some heroes chop chives every day until Reddit says they’re perfect. We whip ours into cream cheese.”

“If you were a brand like Philadelphia Cream Cheese, you might have said, ‘I’m going to chop chives too, and I’m going to show how great we are at chopping chives.’ That’s not how it works on Reddit,” Gaige said. “Instead, you acknowledge what they did.” 

Other brands are leaning into Reddit’s participatory nature. According to Gage, 81% of Reddit’s roughly 121 million daily active users say they enjoy when brands engage in conversation.

When Netflix relaunched Unsolved Mysteries, it shared unused footage and case files directly with Reddit users, inviting them to investigate further.

“They said, ‘Here are the files. Let’s see what you can do with it,’” Gaige said. Rather than pushing viewers to watch the show, Netflix gave fans material to engage with—tapping into the platform’s tendency toward collaboration and investigation.

Despite its authority in fitness, Nike avoids positioning itself as the expert in Reddit threads, instead prompting users with questions like, “What are your best training tips?” and “What would be your advice if you’re getting back into running?”

The goal, Gaige said, is to “let the community be the hero.”

Dove has pushed even further, incorporating both positive and negative Reddit commentary into its campaigns—an approach that reflects the platform’s openness to debate.

“You’ve got to let Redditors have both sides of the story. That’s also what helps LLMs (large language models)—they like seeing a well-balanced positive and negative, they’re more likely to cite those posts and comments,” Gaige said.