The Rise & Fall of Evil Paddington

Source: Digital Spy, edited by author

(This story was originally published on Medium).

“oh btw pay no mind to that person in my basement. i took care of them,” tweeted out Evil Paddington on November 23, 2020. In another tweet, they would later clarify that by took care of, they meant murder.

The account, which is run by actress Elsie K. Fisher, tweeted out dozens of similar comments, many of which earned tens of thousands of likes in a matter of hours. This humorous bit may seem like some harmless fun (and it is). Still, the tweets also signify a much larger pattern of a parody account using the clout of another brand to up their engagement while that original brand sits cluelessly on the sidelines.

Fisher was parodying the character Paddington: The sweet bear that was first introduced in the Paddington book series by writer Michael Bond and later made even more popular by StudioCanal’s 2014 and 2017 movies. Paddington's persona is that of an overly saccharine bear who solves his problems through kindness. His mantra to the world is that “if we’re kind and polite, the world will be right.”

This affable personality is rumored to extend to their official Twitter account as well, where an allegedly leaked image of their guidelines instructs posters to avoid cursing, to not talk about politics, and never to insinuate that Paddington doesn’t actually like marmalade. A typical Paddington Bear tweet is of “innocent” things such as the question, “Shall I have a sprinkling of pumpkin spice or cinnamon on my hot cocoa this afternoon?”

Source: ifunny.co

It seemed only natural that this brand would eventually be subverted — this is the Internet after all — and soon Elsie K. Fisher of “Eighth Grade” (2018) fame spent the day of November 23 posting expletives and political statements in direct contrast to the alleged guidelines. “the k in my follower count stands for kill,” they tweeted sardonically.

Some people loved the tweets calling them the funniest thing they’ve seen, while others were upset that it disrupted their image of the Paddington brand. As Twitter user Grogu Lucas claimed of their mother’s reaction: “This is horrible. Absolutely not okay. No. No no. Paddington is a nice boy!!”

Ultimately, Elsie K. Fisher would ax the Evil Paddington persona a day later, uploading a facetious in memoriam of all her best tweets as the personality, but not before upping her follower account in the thousands, possibly even in the tens of thousands. According to the Wayback Machine, her follower account was sitting above 43,000 followers in mid-October and jumped up to nearly 74,000 followers on November 24 — the day they retired the Evil Paddington bit.

Parody accounts are not new on Twitter and have been well-documented. Nihilist Arby’s (founded in 2015), for example, is an account dedicated to making unruly humor while pretending to be an official Arby’s handle. In a tweet made on June 24, they joked about how a recent protest had burned down an Arby’s, writing: “Hi everyone. How’s the week going? pls enjoy burning the arbys.”

Elsie K. Fisher’s Evil Paddington replicated a very similar type of humor, except her bit was only for a brief period of time. She monetized the attention coming from the leaked slideshow for all its worth by creating some funny, albeit narrowly focused, content.

There is a term for a small-scale brand in business that only applies to a narrow scope of people — it’s called a “micro-brand.” This term has traditionally been used to refer to high-end products such as watches that only have a limited customer base. However, the rise of micro-targeting through social media has allowed any good to be marketed as a micro-brand, and that applies especially to IP. Twitter is filled with people adopting fake personas that only fill a small niche and then dropping them the moment they outlive their usefulness.

Sometimes these brands are serious. It’s quite common for people to change the name of their profile to reflect the latest moment in politics or the news. Following the death of George Floyd, many users, for example, added the phrase “Black Lives Matter” to their handles. The same can be seen with many conservative influencers who in the 2020 election cycle added the phrase “Stop The Steal” to their handles, which was in reference to their so-far unsubstantiated belief that Joe Biden has stolen the election.

Often, however, these microbrands are on the funnier side. Another common trend during the most recent election was for users to claim they represented “The John Wilkes Booth Project.” This naming scheme was not glorifying the assassin of the United States’ 16th president, but rather parodying the bipartisan “Lincoln Project,” which was a political action committee aimed at stoping the reelection of Donald Trump.

These microbrands are notoriously short-lived, but they can be extended when the parody account receives attention from the original IP. In the case of Evil Paddington, the original Paddington brand (owned by Vivendi) did not interact with them, and they have so far not responded to any of our requests for comment. However, it’s not uncommon for major brands to engage with parody handles or stan accounts to make a story go viral.

When Nihilist Arby’s was hacked in 2018, for example, the company used their contacts in Twitter to assist the profile owner, Brendan Kelly, in getting control of their account again. It earned the company a lot of good press and positive engagement that is hard to purchase from advertising alone.

From this perspective, the Paddington brand’s refusal to engage with Evil Paddington seems like a missed opportunity. One comment from their evil counterpoint garnered over 100,000 likes, which is well above the engagement the Paddington account manages to achieve in a typical month or even the last six months combined.

The differing tones of these two accounts probably generated a fair amount of hesitancy from the brand manager, but with that indecision came lost engagement as well as a missed chance to preach the “kindness through adversity” doctrine that Paddington is all about. It’s so rare for a company to be able to talk about kindness and for it actually to be on-brand.

The fact that Vivendi missed this moment speaks to the priorities (or lack thereof) that exist among many of our favorite brands.