Brand wins and fails in social media

BIGGEST >MOMENTS IN SOCIAL MEDIA MARKETING 2012's WINS & FAILS As the worldwide social media audience grows, the impact of wins and fails is amplified. Win, and your victory is that much sweeter; fail, and your disgrace will be played out on an extremely large, virtual public stage. A SNAPSHOT OF SOCIAL MEDIA USERS Internet users who visit social networking sites by age: 92% 73% 38% 57% 18-29 30-49 50-64 65+ What happened Response Platform #WINS While the wins don't generally reach the level of notoriety of the fails, most generated a viral response and positive publicity that would make any PR team drool. Dollar Shave Club TY A NEW COMPANY with an offbeat approach to the pedestrian business of selling razor blades, Dollar Shave Club, received a huge bounce from its viral YouTube video. The ad included a bear costume, the phrase "Our blades are f***ing great" and a smackdown of tennis great Roger Federer. MORE THAN 7.7 You Tube MILLION VIEWS Nike 77% NIKE'S CAMPAIGN honoring everyday athletes targeted London billboards and the social media MORE THAN boost in 16,000 ® Facebook page sphere during the 2012 Olympics; positive feedback outpaced that of official sponsor Adidas. interaction during the Olympics TWEETS Sephora SEPHORA ENGAGED customers with its "15 Days of Beauty" promotion on Facebook and by placing iPads and iPod Touches in MOBILE APP DOWNLOADS EXCEEDED 2 MILLION retail stores to drive mobile traffic. Honda YY HONDA, turning social media convention on its head, offered $500 to the most HONDA REACHED THE MORE THAN 5.5 MILLION active Pinners on Pinterest to take a 24-hour break (called a Pintermission) from the site to promote the new CRV. Winners created a board followers of the high-powered Pinterest users, plus no doubt thousands of others. about the activities they engaged in during their day off. "Bully' movie YY TO PROMOTE A MOVIE about the MORE THAN impact of bullying on families, The Weinstein Co. launched a social 31,000 media campaign that also brought celebrities onboard. FOLLOWERS Awareness helped change Motion Picture Association of America's rating of the film from R to PG-13 #FAILS Naturally, the fails get more attention than the wins. These gaffes absorbed attention and generated reaction, retweets, reposts and media backlash. McDonald's MCDONALD'S hoped to generate some heartwarming anecdotes with promoted tweets around the hashtag #McDStories. Instead, the CAMPAIGN PULLED WITHIN TWO HOURS Twittersphere echoed with viral tweets about fingernails found in Big Macs, baby chickens being scalded alive to make McNuggets and consumers hospitalized with food poisoning. In early 2013, McD's again flirted with social media failure with a campaign asking readers to share their stories of how they eat the company's sporadically appearing McRib sandwich. Chick-Fil-A A DUSTUP OVER CHICK-FIL-A donations to anti-gay charities enflamed passions on both sides of the issue, with much of the debate THE COMPANY DENIED playing out on the company's Facebook page. After Chick-Fil-A was inundated with negative posts, a profile purported to belong to a teenage girl defending the company was revealed to be a hoax account. While the PARTICIPATING IN ANY SCAM company has denied any involvement in the fake profile, it's still never a good day when your company's name is used in connection with the words "Facebook profile hoax." American Apparel AMERICAN APPAREL offered a COMPANY promotion for Sandy victims, sending this email: "In case you're bored during the storm, 20% off everything for the next 36 hours." Those 36 hours would prove to APOLOGIZED and said the ad came "from a good place of trying to keep the machine going-for the sake of our employees and stakeholders." be devastating for the East Coast, as Sandy crashed ashore, killing more than 130 people, leaving more than 4 million without power and causing billions of dollars in property damage. Kitchen Aid TY DURING THE SECOND COMPANY DELETED THE presidential debate, in response OFFENDING to a comment President Barack Obama made about his grandmother and health care reform, the official company Twitter account dispatched the following: "Obamas gma even knew it was going 2 b bad! She died 3 days b4 he became president. #nbcpolitics" tweet and immediately apologized; individual responsible meant to post tweet to individual account and wasn't allowed to tweet in the future for Kitchen Aid. Celeb Boutique CELEB BOUTIQUE'S official Twitter account dispatched: "#Aurora is trending, clearly about our Kim Kinspired #Aurora dress :)" In reality, the trend was a reference to the mass shooting the same day in Aurora, Colo. COMPANY DELETED the offending tweet and apologized. SOURCES USA Today • NPR • New York Daily News • LA Times • AdWeek • Forbes.com · CBS News • Huffington Post • The Telegraph • Mashable.com AdAge · Wall Street Journal • Washington Post • Twitter • The Independent • The Guardian Fast Company · Econsultancy imediaconnection.com · automarketingblog.com mba-in-marketing.com