In the quest to create a social media campaign that catches
your audience's attention or even better, goes viral, companies have pushed
envelopes and taken risks that, unfortunately, have not come even remotely
close to paying off. As you're developing a campaign for your company, it's
helpful to keep in mind some of these epic fails so that you too do not find
yourself in this sad, sad category.
Let's take on the giants! You'd think that companies with
millions of dollars on their marketing budget would have some serious brain
power behind every campaign they put out so they would all be pretty much
textbook flawless, right? Wrooong! Case in point, our good ol' friend, Mickey
D's. In 2012 McDonalds launched a Twitter campaign to share stories about the
company's products and employees via the hashtag #McDStories. The result was a
series of back lashing from negative tweets ranging from being high while
eating McDonalds to throwing up the food. Worst of all, were the tweets
discussing the contents of McDonald's foods like the one sent from a user
tweeting that the chicken nuggets have a foaming agent in them, similar to
products used for building materials. Yuck!!
So the lesson learned here is this: before you give the
public full free reign to talk about your company, most importantly, before you
ENCOURAGE them to do so, make sure that your product is not one that is
polarizing and will cause too much controversy. Otherwise, be prepared to have
some darn good defenses for any negative feedback.
Oh while we're on the fast food train, why don't we just hop
on over to the next cart? Ladies and gentleman, I bring you the epic fail from
Quiznos: "2 Girls 1 Sub". If your mind is in the gutter, you got that
one right away. Yes, as crazy as it sounds, Quiznos subs partnered up with
Playboy for a promotion for their torpedo sub. I'll end my discussion right
here and conclude with the lessons learned. Well, do I even need to state them?
Reputation management, product association, etc., etc., etc. There are some
pretty obvious blunders here...
Another epic fail was a highly offensive Facebook and
Twitter post from the alcoholic company, Belvedere (the picture below speaks
for itself). The spokespeople for the company responded as follows, "We apologize to any of our fans who were
offended by our recent tweet. We continue to be an advocate of safe and
responsible drinking." Tsk, tsk, tsk! So Belvedere has taught us to not
make insensitive, crude jokes on our advertising and how NOT to apologize for
our mistakes. We're sorry you got offended?! Come on, Belvedere!
Alright, so now that
I'm stepping off my soapbox, let's get to the moral of the story. Yes, we need
to be creative, yes we need to step outside the box, and yes, sometimes we must
take risks. BUT with every campaign decision you must carefully evaluate the
consequences. Look at your risks and see if they are manageable. Think of your
audience and put yourself in their shoes. Are you crossing a line and offending
them? Is your product popular enough (in a positive way) that it's worth
gambling with user generated content? Always, always, always carefully analyze
the implications of what you are putting on social media and make sure you get
other people's insights and perspectives before you go public with it. Your
point of view will clearly not always align with the masses. Finally, remember
to always ask yourself if the content you're thinking about posting adds value
to the reader. If the answer is not a clear "yes", just stop yourself
right there.
In addition to the traditional
metrics used by marketers, there are some metrics that are specifically useful
when measuring social media efficacy. For instance, it’s important to track the
engagement ratio in Facebook. This ratio is particularly useful because it
takes into consideration the number of people talking about your page divided
by the number of likes. The result is a clearer and more accurate
representation of your engagement versus just counting likes. 
