Note this post originally appeared on my company blog. Check out the original post here.
The Internet was buzzing yesterday with commentary on the latest iPhone app from AMP Energy Drink. In case you missed it, AMP launched a new app to help guys land women (the main Amp Energy site is down, but you can still download the app from iTunes). Users who download the app can browse through a selection of women including the aspiring actress, the nerd, the princess and so on and so forth. Each type of girl comes with a cheat sheet list of things to bring up during conversation, to help the guy, they say, score. The obvious commentary from the peanut gallery followed - Pepsico was sexist, discriminatory. And from the other side, the general public left wondering why, yet again, a huge deal is being made about another flimsy PR stunt.
It got me thinking about the now regularity with which other campaigns have blown up, once the online community got their fangs in it. From the client side, these crisis-lite incidents are seen as something that needs to be buried or moved past, but the bigger pictures is the question of "what's the point here, folks?", which seems to be the strongest consumer takeaway from social media PR stunts and campaigns trying to mix too many things in one. This is a very vocal and opinionated audience that you're now dealing with, so everyone should expect to receive some feedback. Constructive or otherwise.
Here's a rundown on three of the biggest social media firestarters in the past year or two. If you think of anymore, add them in in the comments.
Amp "Before You Score" iPhone app- Aims to help guys land women. Mashable has more on the app announcement and the backlash. Video demo of the app here:
Motrin Moms- The controversial advertisement aimed at "moms who spend their days carrying their child in a sling need Motrin." The key message was that while carrying a baby for long hours can be painful, it makes them look like an official mom. The obvious chatter uproar exploded in the mom blogger community with a tweet storm of responses and the official ad being pulled. Social media: 1. Motrin: 0.
Skittles Social Sites Homepage: Remember when Skittles.com did a full rebrand of their website making the homepage a new social site each day? Wikipedia. Twitter. Facebook. Flickr. The Skittles campaign received questioning from the mainstream audience (and social media critics) around why they chose to do this when the majority of the Skittles audience is not on these channels. Additionally, because of the openness of the Skittles campaign allowing users to publicly comment on the main website, internet jokesters immediately jumped in to grief the campaign with expletives and NSFW comments. The full recap of the campaign can be read here or whatch the video by Onion editor Baratunde Thurston, mocking the campaign at last year's SXSW.
While the peanut gallery endlessly questions why anyone would ever create these campaigns, I have to applaud the marketers. In this day and age when everything has to be new and fresh, pushing the envelope is a necessity. Something that inspires others to be creative and try even newer things for today's brands. Without these mistakes, we wouldn't be able to pull off some of the success stories.
