The 10 Biggest Social Media Marketing Fails Of 2013
Nima Badiey/Flickr Creative Commons
But there are at least as many fails going on in the marketing social sphere as wins, and the fails are often epic.
A common element to all of these mishaps is that the social media team was not listening. And listening does not just mean talking to customers. It means being aware of the company's place in the Internet's culture and knowing that customers do not appreciate mass-produced responses.
The following list compiles the year's best of the worst, in which a brand's social missteps became magnified for the world to see through nonstop sharing on Facebook, Twitter, Reddit — and sites like us, Business Insider.
10. Strip club chain Spearmint Rhino's Melbourne team thought they'd be naughty and have Facebook users guess whose baby picture they uploaded. It didn't take long for users to look at the VHS sceenshot's time stamp and realize that the future stripper was now only 14 years old. Spearmint Rhino "liked" its own post.
Facebook via brionyjane.com
8. Few things hurt a brand more than an accusation of racism. So even though it's impossible to tell if this tweet from Home Depot was indeed racist or simply stupid, the fact that the Twittersphere was up in arms over it made corporate delete the tweet, apologize for two days, and fire the social media agency responsible.
Twitter/The Home Depot
7. This one is up for debate, but we firmly consider the Colorado nonprofit "Thanks Obamacare!" campaign to be a total fail. Even if some may consider portraying potential customers as morons to be clever marketing, it gave Obamacare critics way too much easy fodder.
6. British entertainment retailer HMV lost complete control of its social media team, when rogue members used the account to childishly live-tweet a massive firing at the company.
Twitter
5. London Luton Airport tapped into the always-hilarious topic of plane crashes for a Facebook post in March. The photo they used came from a 2005 Chicago flight that slid off the runway and killed a 6-year-old boy onboard.
Facebook via nydailynews.com
4. Pepsi's Swedish branch released a set of Facebook ads featuring a voodoo doll of competitor Portugal's megastar Cristiano Ronaldo tied to train tracks, getting his head crushed in, and covered in pins. They were forced to quickly remove them and apologize after a Portuguese anti-Pepsi Facebook group formed and gained over 100K fans in a day.
Pepsi
2. Cooking site Epicurious thought they could help people chill out about the Boston Marathon bombing by promoting some recipes on Twitter. Brands have made inappropriate marketing jokes on Twitter before, but Epicurious raised the bar. "Whole-grain cranberry scones!"
Twitter via cdn.business2community.com
1. Amy's Baking Company in Scottsdale, Ariz., was featured in a particularly grueling episode of Gordon Ramsay's "Kitchen Nightmares." When the episode prompted a wave of negative feedback, the restaurant's two owners took to Facebook in one of the most psychotic and bizarre public rants. They tried defending their restaurant against Reddit and Yelp users with expletives, all-caps, and inciting God. Legendary.
Illustration using images from Fox and Facebook
It's worth checking out more of this meltdown on Foodbeast. Also noteworthy: when the dust settled, the owners thought they could turn some of their viral rant into slogans for t-shirts and hats.
Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/10-worst-social-media-marketing-fails-of-2013-2013-11?op=1#ixzz2lmvzqMv7
