Social Machinery

During 2009, Social media exponential growth generated high interest from brands and organizations. Many companies decided to launch social channels as part of their go-to-market strategy. Even do there are some superb examples about brands that innovated and increased customer engagement by integrating social media into their marketing strategy, many other failed miserably when they tried to use it.    

Domino’s social media disaster

Two Smart domino’s Pizza employees thought it was funny to film themselves performing unsanitary acts with delivery food and upload this video on YouTube. The video became a viral success with more than one million views before it was pulled down. In response, Dominos produced their own video apologizing for their employees’ behavior, fired the employees and initiated legal actions against them. Anyway, the scandal resulted in a multi-million dollar loss and caused great damage to Domino’s 50 year old brand reputation.

Lesson learnt: Not only senior managers and marketing specialists should be educated about Social media opportunities and challenges. Actually, is more or less the opposite situation: Social media empowers mainly any employee and their actions could be spread like wildfire trough the vast social networking ecosystem. Employees represent your brand and with a powerful tool like social media every company should develop and communicate social media guidelines.

Asus blogger contest

Computer manufacturer Asus organized a sponsored contest where bloggers could wrote reviews for its products for a chance to win an Asus review kit. The blogger community voted for a blogger named Gavyn Britton, but this choice wasn’t Asus preference since the review was “too honest”. Therefore, the company decided to change a little bit the rules of the competition and gave away the prize to another blogger. This resulted in an outrage against the computer manufacturer, and the story went mainstream as well.

Lesson learnt: Don’t mess with an angry blogger mop. Social media is about transparency and you need to respect what you say. If you are not too sure about the unexpected consequences of a social media campaign is better not to launch it than change the rules during the campaign.

Honda Astroturfing case

During this year, Honda decided to create a fan page for its upcoming Crosstour model. The company uploaded and published several photos on their Facebook page. The plan was to receive feedback about the new model and generate a big buzz around the car. Unfortunately, things went the other way around and within short time its fan page was flooded with negative comments regarding the look of Honda’s new CUV. Most fans were extremely disappointed about the new design. Among all this bad comments, there was one “fan” really positive about the new CUV. After some few hours, someone discovered that this enthusiastic fan was Honda’s product manager who didn’t disclose his relationship with the company until he was caught by the angry crowd.

Lessons learnt:  First, if you want to ask for feedback, be aware that you will receive honest an sometimes brutal feedback. So better ask yourself if you are prepared for it and its consequences. Secondly, is important to educate employees about their role in the social media space. They are you brand ambassadors and any “social misconduct” will be detected creating a bigger problem for your organization.

Motrin Twitter moms

Motrin launched an online advertising targeted to moms who, the ad explained, might need Motrin (pain killer drug) to ease back pain caused by using slings and such to carry their babies. Motrin offended moms with their ads that encouraged women to use their babies as “fashion accessories”. The advertising campaign was the subject of an enormous amount of negative comments on Twitter with the majority of people saying they would no longer use Motrin products. 

But this is not the worst part. The main problem was how  Motrin handled the backslash. Even do the offending advertising campaign occurred in late 2008, the backlash has carried into 2009. Motrin posted some videos on its site which claimed that moms who do “baby wearing” might need Motrin because kids can be heavy. However, this approach enraged more this legion of angry “mombloggers” who found the ad offensive again, stating that it implied that mothers resent their children for causing them pain. Motrin immediately pulled the ad and issued a formal apology, but the bad press continued.

Lessons learnt: Even do Social media is a new paradigm, basic marketing rules and common sense still applies. Never forget your customer’s needs aspiration and interests and what they feel. Treat people with respect and create bonds with your target audience. Also, if you face a social media disaster take full responsibility from your mistakes and don’t try to insist in something your customer felt as offensive.

Ryanair

A blogger wrote a post about the poor functionality on Ryanair’s website. Actually the blogger pointed out a gap on the Ryanair website that made it possible for anyone to book a flight and not be charged for it. He didn’t actually book a free flight but he wanted the error to be made know.Surprisingly, several employees of the budget airline responded by calling him “a lunatic”, “an idiot” and “a liar”.

“10. Ryanair Staff #1 Says:
February 19th, 2009 at 5:25 pm

jason! you’re an idiot and a liar!! fact is! you’ve opened one session then another and requested a page meant for a different session, you are so stupid you dont even know how you did it! you dont get a free flight, there is no dynamic data to render which is prob why you got 0.00. what self respecting developer uses a crappy CMS such as word press anyway AND puts they’re mobile ph number online, i suppose even a prank call is better than nothing on a lonely sat evening!! “

Even worst, when blogger asked for a formal apology from Ryanair he received this lovely official statement from Ryanair spokesman Stephen Mcnamara:

“Ryanair can confirm that a Ryanair staff member did engage in a blog discussion. It is Ryanair policy not to waste time and energy corresponding with idiot bloggers and Ryanair can confirm that it won’t be happening again. Lunatic bloggers can have the blog sphere all to themselves as our people are far too busy driving down the cost of air travel”.

Needless to say, customers were shocked and furious about Ryanair’s aggression. The controversy spread fast trough forums, blogs and social networking sites.

Lessons learnt: Is free to be nice and kind with your customers. Bloggers are not geeks coming out of the space. They are normal people, customers, fathers, moms and in most of the cases your own customers. If you receive negative feedback be thankful; in most of the cases this is a way for you to improve your business.

Skittles

This is an amazing case study. The main reason is because it’s started as a successful social media campaign implementation. In the first stage, the sweet candy company turned its home page into a Twitter search feed for Skittles buzz. When the campaign first launched, Skittles was one of the hottest trending topics on Twitter. Social media bloggers and people in general were very bullish about Skittles social implementation. Although the site did generate short-term buzz, after a while Skittles homepage became a constant revolving loop of streams pulled from different social networking site of people saying that Skittles loves Twitter and nothing else. Skittles didn’t interact or engage users in the discussion. There was no real community outreach (it was incredibly passive) and it came to be pretty self-centered after first weeks. Also,  most of the Twitter feeds were highly inappropriate for their customer segment, mainly children, as most of the language was offensive and unsuitable for younger visitors.

Lessons learnt: Social media is more than just a fad and is here to stay. It must be integrated into a wider marketing strategy that has clear goals and objectives. You should ask yourself what is the value your social media actions are adding to your brand, sales, customer satisfaction or engagement. Social media should depeen your level of relationship with your customers as the channel facilitates a two ways communication. Therefore none of the sides can be passive.

Pizza Hut Twitter specialist recruitment

On April this year, the pizza restaurant issued a press release stating that it was seeking a Twitter intern (aka “Twintern”) over the summer to manage its Twitter presence. The company stated that “The successful applicant will speak fluent OMG and LOL and correctly use the terms DM (direct message), RT (retweet) and # (hashtag)”.  The story even made the New York Times and created a big controversy about the seriousness on how an international brand wanted to manage their social media challenge with an intern. But also several Twitter users got offended due to the way Pizza Hut lessen Twitter user’s language and jargon. 

Lessons learnt:  Social media is already a mainstream media and it should be treated as a serious and critical channel for any company seriously looking into integrating it into their communicational strategy.

Conclusions

It’s important to keep in mind some social media basic rules. Social media is a social tool, therefore offline world norms like respect, openness, honesty, and transparency applies. Since social tools extremely wide, complex and connected all your actions will be informed to the network. Also the most important rule is to use common sense. Is fine to experiment and make mistakes, but you are not allow to hide it or try to change the facts. Apologizing to your customers or followers, being honest about your actions and learnt from bad experiences is a good start for improve the use of this channel day by day.