Top 5 Lessons from #brandfail
We asked our classmates to search for the top brand fails on social media and to analyze what could have be done to prevent the mistake. Major brands such as McDonald’s, JPMorgan, Budweiser, and the Patriots have made viral social media brand fails. We have outlined the Top 5 Lessons from these brand fails, referring directly to the analysis from our classmates.
Lesson 1: Think before you post, could my words hurt someone?
“It’s not easy to build buzz around household items on social media, but Clorox has managed to do it. In 2012, Clorox’s “Bleach It Away” campaign drove 13MM social media impressions and nearly 22K “bleachable moment” stories submitted, according to PRDaily. Last year, when Apple got a new lineup of 300 emojis, Clorox tweeted “New emojis are alright but where’s the bleach.” Someone on that social media team clearly didn’t realize that many of the newly-released emojies were diversity emojis, adding to the color spectrum of the cartoon people emojis.
All of which is to say, if you’ve got 140 characters, make them count more than make them offend. One word could have been enough to prevent the social media outcry. Changing the statement to “New household emojis are alright but where’s the bleach?” “New emojis are alright but where’s the bleach emoji?” would have been enough to prevent responses…”
Lesson 2: Do not pair promotion with tragedy
https://medium.com/@lilliantchen/epicurious-tactless-tweets-ab0b1b50841a#.v95m2mwoo
“To answer that question, I wanted to look at this example of a #brandfail on Twitter by Epicurious, a website focused on food and recipes. Below are some tweets from Epicurious right after the Boston Marathon bombings. Yes, you read correctly. They just offered a “bowl of breakfast energy” to people in Boston mourning the incident.
Cause marketing” can actually be an effective way for a brand to exhibit its values and connect with consumers. But it needs to be authentic. I’m aware that you probably can’t quite call Epicurious’ tweets above a serious attempt at quote-on-quote “cause marketing”, but at the very least it is an exhibit of sympathy and brand values that I think is closely tied to this marketing strategy.”
Lesson 3: Limit broad hashtag phrases that can be easily re-purposed
https://medium.com/@AzizAyman/not-lovin-it-s-gone-wrong-d1ed682a6c76#.ok0b3aw9e
“On 18th January 2012, the marketing team in McDonald’s thought it would be a great idea to launch a Twitter campaigned dubbed #McDStories, so fans and aficionados could share the good and happy McDonald’s moments. However, things did not go according to plan and the hashtag soon turned into a bashtag. McDonald haters jumped on this opportunity and left some unsavory tweets.
Having a hashtag that is broad and general allows users to provide positive and negative user generated content. In retrospect, if McDonald’s really wanted to pursue a user generated content campaign they should have phrased the hashtag with a positive spin (e.g. #ImLovinIt).”
Lesson 4: Check your sources before you post
“In an attempt to celebrate 4th of July, American Apparel posted this picture on their corporate Tumblr page.
They followed up the picture with the hashtags, #Smoke #Clouds. Smoke and clouds seems appropriate on July 4th, given the array of fireworks displays across the country. I’m guessing that’s what whoever posted this was trying to convey that. Unfortunately, this picture is not a fireworks display. It is the disastrous explosion of the 1986 Space Shuttle Challenger.
Was this just a simple mistake from a careless employee? Probably- the company did admit that during their explanation. Despite this, the American Apparel brand was not only perceived as edgy and young, but also careless, insensitive, and irresponsible. It’s okay to be outside of the mainstream and cater to young people, but not when you look stupid and insensitive. American Apparel learned this lesson the hard way.”
Lesson 5: Make sure the social media platform aligns with the brand
https://medium.com/@fcojmejia/jp-morgan-s-snarkaggedon-9803da8a60a8#.9nsiqrfxw
“Megabank JP Morgan was facing a series of issues in 2013. BloombergBusiness reported at the time that JPMorgan “faced criminal probes including one into possible bribery in Asia and another examining its relationship with Ponzi scheme operator Bernard Madoff. The firm ha[d] been negotiating an agreement with the U.S. to resolve multiple mortgage-bond probes, and two ex-employees were indicted for allegedly trying to cover up a record trading loss last year.” Then, a week after underwriting Twitter’s IPO, JPMorgan invited people to their live Q&A on leadership and career advice.
Users quickly bombarded the company’s Twitter page with questions like “Are any of you going to jail, or do you own the SEC? #AskJPM” After only 6 hours JPM realized that had been a bad idea, and decided to cancel their Q&A. Twitter certainly was not the right platform for this type of dialogue.”
Conclusion
We were blown away by the brand fails that our classmates shared. Some made us laugh while others made us cringe. After reviewing all the submissions, we couldn’t help but notice overarching themes and began categorizing the types of brand fails into lessons. We hope that our teaching points can prevent all of us from ever pioneering a social media campaign that makes its way into a “Brand Fail List” in the future!
- Tory, Gena, Andrew
