HailCorporate is a subreddit devoted to exposing and discussing instances of veiled marketing within reddit, which is when a user portrays themself, whether intentionally or unintentionally, as an unbiased third party that supports a brand.

In HailCorporate’s own words: “Let’s not make reddit look like the outside, where billboards, pictures of products, and company names fill the space that should be used to fill the greatness and wonder in the world. This confusing reddit is in large part about documenting the fact that reddit really is used for viral and native marketing. Yet also to highlight the fact that regular people are doing the work of advertisers.”

Since its October 2011 founding, HailCorporate has experienced steady growth, currently totaling over 33k members and ranking as the 664th most popular subreddit out of the 350k tracked by Reddit Metrics.

Many of HailCorporate’s top posts focus on large brands rather than small up-and-comers:

These top posts suggest a heavier emphasis on revealing intentional rather than unintentional advertising — both of which are mentioned as HailCorporate’s mission — which has sparked complaints from some redditors that HailCorporate has morphed into a group of petty conspiracy theorists or witch-hunters. Redditor sundance1028 eloquently critiqued the conspiracy transformation of HailCorporate:

“All I have seen is witch hunt after witch hunt. An endless parade of smug, self-satisfied posts calling people out as shills based on little more than a corporate logo that happens to appear in the picture they submitted. And god forbid any newbies to reddit try to share a cute picture of their kitten crawling in a Pringles can, HailCorporate will be all over your ass in a minute – with zero evidence mind you – to out you has the corporate shill you are! … You see, when this sub is filled with nothing but unsubstantiated accusations and witch hunts, it has zero effectiveness at all. None. It becomes so much smug white noise on my front page and I don’t really enjoy it.

In short – this subreddit is a joke and a waste of my time and the time of anyone who comes here looking for actual sleuthing. But by all means, carry on with your witch hunts!”

But even if HailCorporate is a bunch of sensationalist witch-hunters, that doesn’t null the possibility of branded reddit presences being viciously attacked, because HailCorporate attacks never solely live within the HailCorporate subreddit, but also within whatever post they’re attacking. For example, the previously mentioned “McDonalds buys 955 votes” post was discussed both within HailCorporate and within the original contended post (pictured below).

Since most of HailCorporate’s attacks are inspired by perceived brand deceit, brands looking to avoid trouble should ensure that their reddit presence is clearly distinguished from the reddit community, whether by clear usernames (e.g. mcdonaldsreddit) or by steering clear of organic posts and solely using reddit’s advertising options.

To end on a silly note: the founder of HailCorporate, Pravusmentis, said he founded the subreddit as a joke: “It is totally silly. I don’t know why anyone subscribes. I just made it because one time around halloween I saw a bunch of posts and I was like, ‘that’s an ad!! Then I was all, I wonder if anyone else feels this way. Yo. Anyway I was in the mood for making subreddits at the time.”

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