Digital Media agencies carry a huge load on their shoulders, when they take up the responsibility of carrying out digital and social media endeavors for bigger companies. This also means taking up the responsibility of success and failure related to the campaigns which involve huge monetary effects. While some digital media campaigns such as the Marks & Spencer’s Eggceptional campaign which was centered on Easter, created a huge buzz on Instagram. They also came up with a short video which garnered a huge amount of favor. For those which do not work according to the plan, people garner them with ‘Boos’ and wish them better luck next time. However, this does lead to a serious dent in the professional world. A trust once broken can take years to be gained back.
So, how do these Digital Agencies claim the confidence of clients back? There are precisely just two ways, either take up smaller clients who do not expect much or convince the bigger clients with more statistically proven data and make it big when they go live. The second option might be a challenge and also requires a lot of research in terms of listening to the market and target audience and what your competitors are doing. Tools like Simplify360, help in performing this task with ease and depending on big data analysis, better marketing campaigns can be designed.
Here’s a list of 5 marketing campaigns which failed miserably and how they could have done it better:
1. MATILDA: Based on a book by Roald Dahl, a musical drama called Matilda was decided to be performed by a famous theater group. As a promotion for the event, they group had hired an ad agency to create a banner ad for them which was supposed to include actual quotes along with the name of the person who said it. However what happened was a disaster. Considering the fact that it went up on New York Times Website, it created a huge uproar, and critics took to increase the insult and awareness about the mistake before the company realized it themselves.
Source: Fastcocreate.com
This situation could have been easily avoided by simple social media listening, which provides constant updates about the campaigns that you host on social media channels or websites. The updates allow one to keep track of whether your campaign is garnering positive or negative reactions. It also helps you get a better picture of how your campaign actually looks online.
2. CHIPOTLE: A strategy which backfires is considered more dangerous than a strategy that does not work. If it is something completely nasty that a company plans and expects to gain more traffic on their website or social media handles, it might not be the greatest idea. This might surely make your brand more visible, but what’s the use if it turns out to be negative. Funnily enough people might actually follow you so they can have their daily dose of funny messages. Chipotle tried to go viral by putting out constant tweets via their official handle which almost looked like someone had hacked their account.
Source: Mashable.com
Chipotle defended this by saying they managed to increase their fan base by a number as small as 4000, which they could have simply done by giving out free food coupons as well. This only led to a lot of people talking bad about the brand once it was confirmed that their account was not hacked and it was only a publicity stunt. This could have been clearly taken care of by making sure that the tweets were taken down as soon as it started generating negative comments only if they had a proper social media analysis tool in place which allows measure the sentiment of the people talking about it.
3. DOMINO’S: Not replying to your audience or replying something completely out of context is one of the main reasons why brands tend to look negative on social media. When one lady posted a comment on Domino’s Facebook page commending their good quality and delicious food, Domino’s came up with a reply which was generally a response to a complaint. This led to a fury among the pizza lovers followed by negative comments which spoke about a machine reply system of Domino’s.
Source: Gawker.com
Domino’s did try to defend it by saying ‘real human make mistakes’ however, the reply did not seem to settle well among the audience. However, with a proper customer service dashboard in place, especially designed for customer support executives, this could have been easily avoided. Confusions lead to mistakes and a more systematic display of content helps in recognizing and responding better.
4. PEPSI: When you make an intentional try to connect the online and the offline space while running a campaign, it might actually be a difficult task. However, if your offline campaign has a big noticeable mistake in it, the news does not take any time to go viral. When Pepsi associated itself with a Japanese cloth brand, named Aape, the font they used on their banners made the “A” look like “R”. This led to a huge outrage among Pepsi fans about it being associated with ‘Rape’.
Source: Fastcodesign.com
Problems like this can be easily solved by simply clearing the doubts in the minds of people through rigorous social media posts. This can be done through proper social media management, which is possible only when one has proper listening tools like Simplify360.
5. HYUNDAI: It was almost a suicidal campaign for the brand itself by using a very sensitive topic like suicide, to represent the goodness of their cars. As much as suicide is a topic which is very personal and heart breaking, it is also a medical situation which people are trying to fight. Using such examples mindlessly can create havoc among the brands fan base. Although the brand apologized for their actions, it was too late and the damage was already done.
Source: Adage.com
The biggest damage that was caused to Hyundai was the fact that famous bloggers and writers picked up the mistake and started criticizing it. This led to a lot of bad name for the company. Such situations can be easily avoided by a company by using social media analysis tools which help measure the sentiment of their audience, and provide them with results about what is favored in the market against what is not.