6 big brand social media fails & when does a fail become a WIN?
If you’re looking for examples of what not to do on Social media, learn from the mistakes of these big brand marketing fails & how to turn a fail into a win.
1. Amazon Prime Day
A lesson well learned from Amazon’s prime day sale, make sure you can live up to the hype you create over a campaign.
Customers were promised amazing deals, better even than Black Friday generating the hashtag #Primedayfail when Amazon failed to deliver on these marketing claims.
http://www.buzzfeed.com/kanikateng/the-26-best-responses-to-amazon-prime-day-9wy1
2. IHOP’s Offensive Attempt at Humour
It was unlikely a woman that approved this sexist tweet from IHOP, commenting on women’s breasts as “Flat but has a GREAT personality.”
IHOP’s attempt at Twitter humour failed and was deleted after a backlash of angry tweets.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/ihop-tweet-breast-joke_us_56249e61e4b08589ef47eacb
3. Bloomingdale’s Says You Should Spike Your Best Friend’s Drink
This example just goes to show how quickly a scandal can escalate on social media. One line of catalogue copy quickly became a worldwide topic on social media from outraged women asking, how on earth did this ever get approved?
http://www.buzzfeed.com/stephaniemcneal/bloomingdales-egg-nog-ad
4. Vodafone’s twitter account in the wrong hands
Never trust the office intern with social media accounts or you’ll end up in the sticky situation Vodafone found themselves in when a now ex-employee accidentally tweeted via the brand’s twitter account.
A homophobic post is never a good way to improve brand reputation, even if it is an isolated mistake by an employee. However they have dealt with the issue with sincerety by apologising publicly on social media, and since been used as an example to mitigate similar problems on social media.
http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2010/feb/05/vodafone-twitter-obscene-tweet
5. Asda’s Not So Strategically Placed Diabetes Ad
After an Asda shopper spotted this embarrassing faux pas from Asda, it received over 1 million views on social media. The not so strategically placed ad for free diabetes tests was overshadowed by the stacks and stacks of sugary treats on promotion.
http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/asda-staff-left-red-faced-after-4510885
6. The Apple “bendgate” Scandal
After several negative customer reviews of the iPhone6, a viral hashtag (#bendgate) sparked on twitter shortly after release of the new device.
Here’s how you give your biggest competitors the ammunition to jump on the bandwagon and use your brand’s negative press to their advantage…
6.5 When a brand fail becomes a big win.
Finally, not quite a social media fail as this ended up a big win for Gregg’s witty & responsive social media team.
A good sense of humour and good social media management can quickly turn bad press into a great opportunity.
Followers loved the witty banter Gregg’s bribe to Google in an attempt to get the embarrassing problem fixed.
Conclusion
The good news is most of these fails can be solved with better internal processes involving social media, but also being prepared to mitigate negative response can quickly turn a bad situation around.