DailyDirt: Be Careful What You Ask For
from the urls-we-dig-up dept
The internet can be a rather dangerous place to ask people for suggestions. This is especially true for big brands and pop singers (eg. Taylor Swift’s promotional contest that voted for her to play at the Horace Mann school for the deaf) who have a significant number of haters just waiting for an opportunity to troll. Marketing folks have been trying out some experiments in gathering “user generated content” from the internet, and here are a few of cases that didn’t go quite as well as planned.
- Coca Cola has apologized for its “Share A Coke” website in South Africa that apparently didn’t limit user input to people’s names. Filtering user input is a lesson that seems to be re-taught again and again. [url]
- McDonald’s asked people to share stories of their favorite memories of the burger chain giant, but not everyone had cheerful, glowing things to say. The #McDStories hashtag was pulled from promotion after just a couple hours. “#McDStories: McDialysis? I’m loving it!” [url]
- Back in 2009, Skittles turned over their main website to anyone on Twitter who simply mentioned “skittles” in their tweets. Was that campaign a success or a failure? Tell us in the comments below…. [url]
If you’d like to read more awesome and interesting stuff, check out this unrelated (but not entirely random!) Techdirt post via StumbleUpon.
Filed Under: advertising, brands, campaigns, coke, crowdsourcing, marketing, share a coke, skittles, ugc, user generated content
Companies: coca cola, mcdonald's, twitter
Comments on “DailyDirt: Be Careful What You Ask For”
Be careful, indeed.
Now people in South Africa can design cans that say COKE IS GAY.
Skittles is pretty clever.
It’s like those self-serving cashiers Tesco has. Why do the work that your customers can do for you?
Let’s not forget the time Pitbull was sent to a Walmart in Alaska.
http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/entertainment/2012/07/internet-votes-to-send-rapper-pitbull-to-alaska-walmart/
Dumbasses
When the marketing tools learn that hashtags are not what you use when you want shills. You have no control over it and they’ll insult you on principle alone for trying to get them to provide free advertising.
JP Morgan
#ASKJPMorgan was something to see.
It was a serious clusterfsck, widely reported:
After Twitter #Fail, JPMorgan Calls Off Q. and A.
http://dealbook.nytimes.com/2013/11/13/after-twitter-fail-jpmorgan-calls-off-q-and-a/
JP Morgan shows exactly how to not use Twitter
http://www.buzzfeed.com/matthewzeitlin/jpmorgan-shows-exactly-how-to-not-use-twitter
Best of JP Morgan Twitter Fiasco
http://www.outsiderclub.com/the-best-of-the-ask-jp-morgan-twitter-fiasco/609
JPMorgan Chase’s Twitter initiative backfires
http://www.bizjournals.com/sanfrancisco/blog/2013/11/jpmorgan-chase-bank-twitter-askjpmorgan.html
Re: JP Morgan
Yes, I think they took the cake on that one.
What a laugh fest.
Let’s not be too rough on these sensitive job creators though – they just might leave or something … lol
I tend to believe that if the brand is generally well seen by the public it should be ok to go social like that. However if you are Eletronic Arts or in their league you should be very wary.
I guess the failures are exactly companies that have distanced themselves from doing stuff that’s good for the customers to abusing their dominant position in the market.
q.cells solar panel
I have read your post carefully.this post is so nice and helpfull.When the marketing tools learn that hashtags are not what you use when you want shills. You have no control over it.So thanks for your posting and I hope you will continue your posting in future.