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E A L L K N O W T H A T L E A R N I N G F R O M Y O U R M I S T A K E S IS O N E O F T H E B E S T W A Y S T O
A M A S S K N O W L E D G E . BUT B&T B E L I E V E S THAT L E A R N I N G FROM THE M I S T A K E S O F OTHE R S IS FAR M O R E E N J O Y A B L E . H E R E , B & T U N V E I L S A F E W O F T H E G R E A T E S T G A F F S
FROM BLUNDERING B R A N D S A S THEY TRY TO NEGOTIATE THE MASSES ON SOCIAL MEDIA.

SHE

ALSO

TELLS

Y O UH O WT O D O I T B E T T E R ,

WORDS: SUSI BANKS

You can always rely on Qantas for an almighty

stuff up and the pride of Australia's skies recently
obliged with some belting social media mayhem.
In July 2013 pornographic spam was posted on its
Facebook page overnight and was viewed by a
nine-year-old boy. The image appeared online for
several hours but the company's response was
that its social media sites wei'e only monitored
during Australian business hours and that since
it was in the middle of the night, a child wouldn't
normally be on the internet.

Later, a senior spokesperson told the poor

offended father that the image was "not too bad",
which is true... if you don't mind staring at a
stranger's family heirlooms.
George Photios, a director of local digital marketing agency G Square, says airlines seem
to cop a lot of flak via social media, probably
because they are some of the easiest companies to

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FAR BETTER.

target. "When people are travelling, stress levels

are already high. The last thing travellers want
is to find out their flight is three hours delayed
or that they have to spend the first few days of
their holiday living out of their carry-on luggage,"
he says.

TAKEAWAYTIP:
Social media is 24/7. If you're serious about
having a social media presence then you must
have people monitoring the channels non-stop. If
not then you too can fall victim and end up being
featured in the national press, breakfast TV, and
a litany of blogs for all the wrong reasons.

Trying to take advantage of a disaster to produce

content for social media will turn into a disaster
for brands. American Apparel in the US found
this out when it posted Twitter comments during
Hurricane Sandy. The company tweeted: "In case
you're bored during the storm 20% off
everything for the next 36 hours". In case you're

bored!? Meanwhile Gap attempted to come across

as caring by tweeting: "All impacted by Sandy,
stay safe!" But in the same tweet said: "We'll be
doing lots of Gap.com shopping today. How about
you?"
CJ Hudson, co-creator of Stencil, a digital
research, communications and media buying
company, terms these incidences as "disaster disasters" and says possibly the cream of insensitive Tweets must be from AT&T when it looked
to promote a phone in remembrance of 9/11. A
shot of an AT&T smartphone with a Photoshop-ed
picture of the Twin Towers on the screen and the
line "Never Forget" was used. One example of a
reply was: "@AT&T your cool photoshop makes
the memories of watching my parents cry in front
of the television a lot easier to deal with today..."

TAKEAWAYTIP:
It's common knowledge that overtly selling
through social media is risky. But selling against
a moment of hurt for others is a cardinal sin and
one that the social landscape won't let you get

away with. If you want to show corporate sensitivity then fine, hut don't under any circumstances
mix shameless self-promotion with disaster management. You'll only end up managing your very
own catastrophe.

Everyone knows the perils of drunk tweeting. But

that didn't stop an alcohol company getting
involved with social media. Approaching
Eacebook with good intentions, Smirnoff Vodka
ran a simple photo contest associated with a
product launch, where Eacehook fans voted on the
hest party picture. The image with the most 'likes'
was to be deemed the winner.
Sounds great, right? Keith Crowell, VP of social
media for Appen, a glohal linguistics technology
firm, which has its Australian hase in Sydney,
says: "Most marketers would agree this is a fantastic concept to create consumer engagement,
excitement around the hrand, and to identify
super fans." But the problem arose when some of
the comments were sexist and some of the images
depicted underage drinking. Awkward.
Up until then, advertising laws only applied to a
brand's wehsite and other ohvious print or digital
media not Eacehook pages. The Australian
Advertising Standards Bureau (ASB) was quick
to correct this oversight and mandated that companies' Eacehook pages are in fact an extended
form of advertising, and that the content on the
Facehook pages - not only the brand's content,
but the user-generated content - should be held
to the same standards of accuracy and rules,
including age-appropriate depiction of alcohol
consumption".

TAKEAWAYTIP:
Social media channels are extensions of advertising. All the content within must now adhere to
the standard advertising guidelines, regardless
of whether it comes from the hrand or the
brand's followers. The hlamc for depicting drunk
15-year-olds and spreading virtual bullying sits
squarely with you the marketer. Scary, hut absolutely right.

Many of the gigantic social media stuff-ups we

hear about are of the more generic variety, when
the hrand asks for feedback, posts an open
question or asks people to ask their own questions. Crowell cites a big social media fail hy fast
food giant McDonald's in 2012.

The company launched a Twitter campaign aimed

at seeking positive customer stories about its
product with #McDStories.
The concept was too broad and gave open slather
for Twitter users to start posting comments like
"#McDStories: McDialysis? I'm loving it!"
Another wrote, "Eound a dirty hand aid in the
hottom of a takeout bag.. .#McDStories." Another
tweeted: "One time 1 walked into McDonalds and
I could smell Type 2 diabetes floating in the air...
#McDStories."
It was only a couple of hours until McDonald's
realised what was happening and switched to
another hashtag. Sensibly, they were strategic
enough to keep an eye on the Tweets, and quickly
make an adjustment.

TAKEAWAYTIP:
"In social media, two hours can he a really long
time," says Crowell. "It only takes a second to
retweet and really gain social momentum, good
or bad. With quicker monitoring, done through
social media tools that can detect sentiment, it's
possible they could have acted even faster."

The fast food and takeaway food industry has

often run into trouble via social media platforms.
Mike van der Heijden, managing director of
Brand Vision, gives the example of the TGI Eriday's restaurant chain in the US. The brand also
has locations in Australia.
"TGI Eriday's (and its new agency at the time, Puhlicis) launched what it thought to he an ingenious
social media campaign. The company created a
fictional character by the name of Woody, who
was an out-of-work actor and claimed to he the
ultimate TGI Eriday's fan who had made a het
with TGI Eriday's that when reaching 500,000
followers hy 30 September 2009, fans would
get a free Jack Daniel's Burger or Jack Daniel's
Chicken Sandwich," says Mr van der Heijden.
"However, what TGI Eriday's did not anticipate
was the fact that this campaign would go viral,
and the Woody page exceeded the 500,000 fan
goal within 11 days. Hitting goals that quickly
would normally he a reason to celebrate right?
Wrong!" he says.

Eirstly, some people had thought that this Woody

persona was an actual out-of-work actor and hy
joining the 'campaign' were thought to be helping
him out. This resulted in many angry fans who
felt betrayed when they found out the campaign
was manufactured advertising, and TGI Eriday's felt the wrath of these angry followers on its
Eacehook page.
Secondly, it appears nohody gave any thought
as to what to do with fans that joined after the
500,000 fan milestone had been reached. These
new fans just joined because they saw ads on
TV, hut realised they were too late for their free
hurgers. Again, the angry fans took to TGI Friday's' Eacehook wall and shared their stories.
Then TGI Eriday's said Woody had arranged for
the first 1,000,000 fans to get free hurgers. But
the company had not worked out the logistics of
how this offer would he delivered. Thousands of
people again took their frustrations to Eacehook,
this time ahout the non-delivery of vouchers, inability to print vouchers and the fact that vouchers
had to he used within four days of issue.
Van der Heijden says Puhlicis was then forced
to disallow people from posting to the TGI Eriday's wall, as things were getting out of hand. All
in all, TGI Eriday's managed to alienate almost
1,000,000 people within a month. And if this
wasn't enough of a disaster, on March 9, 2010,
Woody and his almost 1,000,000 followers vanished from Facehook, never to he seen or heard
from again.

TAKEAWAYTIP:
Keep it honest. People will not create a lasting
relationship with your hrand if the representatives
of your hrand are not real.
Furthermore, timing is everything. The social
media campaign must to be aligned with the TV
campaign (and all other mediums).
Einally, plan past the four-week mark. What are
you going to do with all these followers and how
do you plan to engage them in an ongoing manner
that continues the hrand commitments into the
months and years to come?
Some food for thought no douht. #

Besides the fact that it hit its goal too quickly

and had not even started its TV ad campaigns,
there were several issues with this campaign
that marketers should learn from.

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