This post is by Heidi Cohen, principal of Riverside Marketing Strategies. For more of her analysis of the Suxorz, including what these failures can teach you, check out her blog.
Face it: It’s easy to select the awards for the best of something. You can watch trending social media shares, favorite lists, comments, purchases or other factors to decide what came out on top. But when it comes to the worst-in-class, it’s more challenging. You have to differentiate the no-names from the out-right failures, based on their poor showing on a variety of metrics. That’s what distinguishes the “winners” of this year’s “Suxorz” awards as the worst social media of 2011.
This year’s Suxorz panel chose the worst of social media across an array of topics. Among the top social media taste-makers were David Berkowitz of 360i, writer Twanna Hines, Brian Morrissey of Digiday and B.L. Ochman of What’s Next Blog. It was moderated by Henry Copeland of BlogAds, while Jon Accarrino of Definition 6 played DJ.
Now, without further ado, here are 2011’s worst social media sins. All of the options are included so you can get a feel for the variety of issues that were discussed. (Note: Because links weren’t shared during the event, I tried to get relevant links where possible.)
Tin ears. These social media examples didn’t get the reason what they did was wrong.
- Condom-maker Olla sends friend requests from unborn children. Regardless of your view of contraceptives, this is wrong on so many levels. To make a bad move worse, Olla then branded the hell out of it.
- Nikon says cameras take photos, not people. It’s not a good practice to tell customers they don’t matter. It’s going to piss them off. To add insult to injury, Nikon deleted the comments on Facebook.
- Winner: Ashton Kutcher tweets pro Bro Paterno. In Brian Morrissey’s view, Kutcher’s tweet is the worst case of social media because a second-rate actor is making social media seem grubby.
- Jockey International asks “Can #Tebow WIN you FREE underpants?” in promoted hashtag #IfTebowWins.
Don’t mess with bloggers. Like other forms of public relations, many companies reach out to bloggers. In the process, they miss the boat in a variety of ways.
- ConAgra Foods, with agency Ketchum, misleads bloggers. ConAgra invited food bloggers to an event where they discuss gourmet food — and then serves them frozen food. Bet you can’t guess what the bloggers did next!
- Yahoo! exec CCs fired bloggers on invite. While this is a social media issue because it involves bloggers, it’s also just bad management and e-mail usage. How can you invite bloggers to an event and expect good feedback after your organization has just given them the boot?
- Kourtney Kadashian’s PR guy trash-talks “The Bloggess.” A PR guy made a mistake and wouldn’t back down while a Texas-based mommy blogger set off a firestorm. While the PR person was wrong, the blogger felt overly entitled and wouldn’t let go.
- Winner: Ragu spams dad blogger with video making fun of him. Another case of sending the wrong message to the wrong audience: a video that says when mom cooks, it rocks, and when dads cooks, it’s bad. Oops.
Fun with hashtags. When it comes to hashtags, marketer beware, because these babies can come back to haunt you.
- Kenneth Cole rides on #Cairo coattails. In the midst of the Egyptian revolution last February, Kenneth Cole used the #Cairo hashtag to talk about their spring collection. While Cole understood the hashtag would get him a bigger audience, he didn’t get that using an event like a revolution to promote your clothes was wrong on so many levels!
- Entenmann’s piggybacks on the Casey Anthony #notguilty decision. Another case of a company misusing a hashtag related to a sad news item to promote their product by association.
- Toyota spams Super Bowl tweeters with @CamryEffect. Toyota set up several similar Twitter accounts and sent messages to anyone using Superbowl hashtags. While Toyota later apologized after the fact, they were like a kid who didn’t understand what he did wrong.
- Winner: Durex South Africa makes jokes women don’t find funny #DurexJoke. (Warning: Link contains non-PG references.) Durex didn’t understand how women would get upset by these jokes.
Well played. In this category, companies came through and did the right thing on social media.
- AA faces down Alec Baldwin on Facebook. American Airlines pulled Alec Baldwin from a flight for not turning off an electronic device before that flight — and the company let people know about it on Facebook. Well played for being open when one of your customers gets upset when you enforce your rules.
- Heinz rebounds from balsamic vinegar ketchup e-commerce bottleneck. After launching their latest ketchup flavor exclusively on Facebook, Heinz had problems with their e-commerce platform, leaving many of their more than 850,000 fans mad. Two days later, Heinz shipped 35,000 bottles of balsamic vinegar ketchup.
- Freshdesk fights back with words against competitor Zendesk. Freshdesk took a fight with a competitor off of Twitter and defended themselves by showing where there were issues.
- Winner: Tucker Max uses sponsored tweets. Tucker Max, author of ” I Hope They Serve Beer in Hell” used sponsored tweets and they backfired. As they say, you need truth in advertising.
Hijacked twitter hashtags. These stories are all cases of not properly minding your hashtags.
- Cat Fancy magazine (not). If you’re not on social media, it’s understandable to get blindsided by a problem. But in this case, Cat Fancy magazine’s editor had a Twitter account. Maybe she should have learned how to make her tweets count!
- #McDstories hijacked. This is a clear case of not thinking through the implications of what customers will say. What happened? Customers told the hamburger giant how bad their food is!
- Winner: Netflix launches Quikster. Netflix had a double whammy with this move. Forgetting the “Do No Harm Rule,” Netflix changed their service that no one wanted. Even worse, they couldn’t get the Twitter account for the name they chose. (Hint: May be they should have tried another name?)
- #QantasLuxury hijacking. During a labor dispute with pilots that left flights grounded, Qantas launched a Twitter campaign. Talk about bad timing.
Trying too hard. If you don’t understand social media or even a specific platform, it’s not a good idea to use it for your marketing.
- Winner: Actor Woody Harrelson spams Reddit’s AMA (aka Ask Me Anything). Woody Harrelson used this platform to promote his new film “Rampart.” He didn’t understand that he had to answer questions about anything, not just the movie. People called it the crappiest AMA and ramparts became a meme.
- Burson-Marstellar urges bloggers to write anti-Google op-eds for Facebook. This is a lesson in how not to do blogger outreach. Even worse, it’s one of the biggest PR firms.
- LG, with Ogilvy, tries to pay “brand ambassadors.” While trying to reach influencers, Ogilvy crossed the line with this blogger by offering to pay. For this blogger, at least, it wasn’t about the money.
- Kayak.com pulls ads from “All-American Muslim.” To start with, there’s a problem whenever your CEO is writing “We’re not bigots.” Instead of saying we made a mistake and turning the incident into a teachable moment, Kayak missed.
Politics. In an election year, there’s sure to be social media gaffs.
- Rick Perry’s jacket. A spoof on Rick Perry’s anti-gay ads, which compares them to the film “Brokeback Mountain.”
- Pets with Newt. This spoof plays off of the Mitt Romney comment about taking the family dog on top of the car. While Newt seems to being doing well with an unidentified animal, his contest “Is your pet cool enough to be a pet with Newt” got no response.
- Facebookers punk Dmitry Medvedev. While this campaign was in Russian, it’s as if Dmitry Medvedev is the Ashton Kutcher of dictators. If you’re a dictator, why are you on social media? It’s not your image.
- Winner: Former Rep. Anthony Weiner. To put it mildly, Anthony Weiner doesn’t get social media. He sent messages he thought were private but the photos were public. Of course, his name made the issue all the more juicy for social media. #FAIL ( Here’s my commentary on the Weiner scandal.)
Looking at the Suxorz selections and the winners in each category, most of the social media issues came down to sexism or stupidity. The lesson for marketers, PR professionals and brand champions is to make sure you understand the social media platform before you launch your initiative and use some old fashioned common sense. If you’re not sure, then at least get some other perspectives, preferably your customers!
In your opinion, what was the worst social media screw up of 2011, and why do you feel that way?
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#Cairo, not #Cario?
Oh no! Thanks for the excellent catch.
Great sum-up of #suxorz, and let's not forget favorite audience contribution of lamest tactic: using QR codes in underground signage
EB–Thank you. I left the customer selections off. I don't view QR codes as social media but I agree the JetBlue ads were a #FAIL. Happy marketing, Heidi Cohen
My recent post How to Fail At Social Media By Not Really Trying
I'm sorry Heidi can you explain exactly how The Bloggess was in the wrong here?
Have you ever read her blog?
Do you know what she is about?
Maybe I missed something.
Rick–
Thank you for taking the time to comment. To clarify, these examples were selected by the panel, not me. I approached this article more as a reporter. The example was presented as a PR person's pitch gone wrong and the blogger heating up the firestorm.
Based on your comment, I've looked further and discovered that The Bloggeress has a large following and deserved better treatment. (In my view, she deserved better treatment regardless of her social graph.) As a marketer, I agree that the PR person should have been more careful regarding his communications and done more research (as I should have as well before submitting this article.) Regardless of your client, there's no place for foul language, especially when you want someone to do something for you.
Additionally, before this example was presented, more fact checking should have been done. The problem is many non-bloggers assume that all bloggers have tiny blogs with 5 followers.
That said, as a blogger, I've gotten bad PR pitches and found many PR folks to be tenacious longer than warranted.
I appreciate you're keeping me on my toes.
Happy marketing,
Heidi Cohen
[...] The strategies that have been provided here will assist you in marketing your business in the modern age. Re-read these tips so you are sure you're up to date about how to integrate social media into your business. You will be astonished when you see how big a difference it makes towards making your business a success. Social media marketing can be an extremely effective tool that makes promoting your products in tod…p> [...]
Sorry one more bone to pick. Blogger Andrew Brietbart broke the Anthony Weiner story not Gawker. Being it was one of the biggest political/sex scandals of the year and a major coup you should probably link to one of his many posts on the story instead. Here is the one where Congressman Weiner apologizes to Breitbart for calling him a liar:
http://biggovernment.com/publius/2011/06/06/weine…
Rick–
I appreciate you're helping me with fact checking on this piece! I'll get the link changed.
Hopefully, you'll find my blog and other writing worth commenting on as well.
Happy marketing,
Heidi Cohen
Interesting analysis from the panel, but sounds like they are following hype. Curious if any of them are aware that 2% of the tweets were negative and that once the negative started, we moved quickly and it subsided immediately. Most of the media ignored that fact. Seems like the panel either didn't know that or didn't do their homework.
Rick,
You've actually gotten props on this very blog for the handling of fallout of that indecent:
http://smartblogs.com/socialmedia/2012/01/25/what…
That said, I wasn't at the event on Wednesday, but from Heidi's report it sounds like they were questioning the wisdom of the campaign in the first place.
How does a 2% negative reaction compare to the average response to a McDonald's campaign?
[...] Take a look at some of the worst social media screw-ups for last year as noted in one article. [...]
It wasn't as publicized as the examples in your article, but Suze Orman created a fuss when she engaged in a Twitter war with personal finance bloggers over her Approved prepaid debit card. She called one of them an "idiot" and said that bloggers are not "real" journalists. She angered many people with her rudeness and name calling. It created a big backlash and was mentioned on Fox News, MSN, and several other places. http://www.brucewelton.com/2012/01/10/suze-orman-…
[...] move, Brian Morrissey flipped the script and called the Bloggess the #SUXORZ for being “overly entitled” and not letting the issue [...]
I appreciate being included but I'm not sure what I felt "overly entitled" to. Basic common respect, I guess?
People should be treated with decency regardless of how many followers they have. No one should ever have to be told that they should feel flattered they were even viewed as relevant enough to be bombarded with form-letter pitches. It's just my opinion, but it's one I stick by.
My recent post And then I became a recurring comic book character. Someone send me my geek card.
Also (as an FYI) this guy wasn't Kourtney Kardashian's PR guy. He was just a guy selling pantyhose and he happened to use a candid picture of Kourtney wearing hose to as a weird example of why pantyhose are for cool people. At the very least you should correct that part of the article.
My recent post And then I became a recurring comic book character. Someone send me my geek card.
[...] of examining the mistakes by taking a look at some of the categories provided in a SmartBlog article for the Suxorz [...]
So, if the PR person had been a woman (let's call her "Kim"), and the Bloggess was a man (let's call him, "Blogdude"), and Kim had called Blogdude a "fucking [fill in appropriate slur here, depending on what's in/appropriate for Blogdude]," would Blogdude be justified in pointing out the error of Kim's ways?
For example, if Blogdude is Jewish or gay (I'm both, so I'm comfortable using these as examples), and Kim had accidentally let slip online that Blogdude is "a fucking Hebe," or "a fucking faggot," and Blogdude told his followers about this, and they kicked up a shitstorm, would that be more comfortable for you?
I'm just wondering, cuz I see a lot of women bloggers get shit (personal attacks, sometimes including death or rape threats) any time they offend someone, but with (white straight) dude bloggers, not so much.
IMO, this award is for the Bloggess being uppity enough to be a woman with some power.
(Yes, I'm aware, Heidi, that you are likely a woman, too. But who CHOSE the "winners"?)
Is it too late to nominate this post for the "tin ear" thing?
As a blogger, I think that calling the Bloggess "overly entitled" over this reveals the sort of mentality entrenched in a certain subset of marketing that bloggers despise. The mindset "we can spam you with frankly insultingly insipid emails irrelevant to your interests, and if you object, even in a joking way, you are OVERLY ENTITLED" is a boiler-room-telemarketer mindset not entitled to any respect.
People who spam strangers run the risk of ridicule. People who spam strangers, receive ridicule in response, and then act all butthurt about it deserve HUGE HEAPING PORTIONS of ridicule.
[...] article was inspired by By Heidi Cohen’s article http://smartblogs.com/socialmedia/2012/02/16/live-from-social-media-week-suxorz-the-worst-social-med… on February 16, [...]
[...] Social media mistakes can make a company’s numbers drop like a lead balloon. In this SmartBlog article, the plethora of mistakes was evident as we read through the list at its [...]
I'm with those who think that The Bloggess was in the right. I'm glad you've done a bit more digging–but why not do that first? After all, the issue was initiated by the PR agency. It's not like she went looking for them. She just knew enough to be ready for them. And if the manager had paid more attention to what "Reply All" meant, the whole thing would never have happened. http://kathylisiewicz.com/2011/10/07/reply-all/
[...] have a few minutes and want to see what not to do in social media, take a gander at this article, The worst social media screw-ups of 2011: Live from Social Media Week. Here are some excerpts from the article – it cites social media cases as bad as a car [...]