Social Media #Fails

Big brands are no strangers to failure, and with social media enabling consumers to voice out their opinions more than ever, brands ought to be more careful when putting themselves in the spotlight. Just ask Gap and United Airlines.

Barely 3 months into 2012 and we already have two social media #fails from two of the world's most famous brands.

McDonald's
In January 2012, in an attempt to get their fans to share heartwarming stories about Happy Meals, the fast-food giant created the #McDStories hashtag on Twitter. This quickly turned into a McNightmare when users started Tweeting less-than-heartwarming stories about their McD experiences.

Naturally the campaign was scrapped. However, as with most things that get online, the damage can't be undone and #McDStories is now a popular meme used by sarcastic fans.

Coca-Cola
In February 2012, the Coca-Cola Australia Facebook fan page tried a social media experiment that needless to say, failed.

As someone whose previous job included creating status messages for Coca-Cola Philippines (the link is IP-targeted so you'll only see status updates relevant to your country), I don't even know how this was approved. I'm sure you can guess what happened next.

Interestingly, Coke Australia has decided to keep the now-famous status update on its wall, rather than delete it. I guess they figured some harmless college humor is better than the accusations of censorship they'd probably get if it was removed.

Ah, social media. Giving consumers the power to chide, forfeiting brands the power to hide.

Til then,
Mae

Related links:
#McDStories: When A Hashtag Becomes A Bashtag
Coca-Cola’s Facebook word association game backfires into fan-on-fan scrum