Coca-Cola is considering cutting ties with digital agency Lean Mean Fighting Machine which implemented a controversial Facebook campaign. Parents are accusing it of targeting children by using jokes/references to a pornographic movie. The soft-drink behemoth has been under some serious scrutiny after the less-than-ideal Facebook campaign for the Dr. Pepper brand. They have informed the agency that it must stop all advertising work on Coca-Cola brands until a decision is reached on whether to terminate the relationship.
“We have stopped all our ongoing work with digital agency Lean Mean Fighting Machine and are currently reviewing our relationship with the agency,” said a spokeswoman for Coca-Cola GB (Great Britain).
Here’s the gist of the campaign: users allowed their Facebook status box to be taken over by the company. Users could then select from three levels of “embarrassingness”, and the contract with Facebook explicitly stipulated that all content had to be moderated by Coke before going live. Bad idea. When a Mumsnet user saw her 14-year-old daughter’s Facebook page and the Dr Pepper campaign she had joined she was appalled. Her status had been updated with a message that made direct reference to a hardcore pornographic film.
Here’s a few more of the infamous embarrassing statuses used as part of the promotion: “Lost my special blankie. How will I go sleepies?”, “What’s wrong with peeing in the shower?” and “Never heard of it described as cute before.”
Rioting and blundering ensued.
Okay that last poke was in bad taste, a lot like Dr. Pepper’s most recent Facebook campaign.
There is a real issue at hand: How far is too far when pushing the limits of branding and marketing? The branding and marketing campaigns that causes a double-takes are largely considered the most effective. Did he really ______? Was she about to ______? The data confirms that click-through rates, views, and mentions increase when the campaign pushes you close to the edge. Which edge is the million dollar question.
Advertising and Marketing firms get paid, and paid handsomely to do their jobs because they create things that we’d never dream of saying, doing or creating; and then we consume it like Thanksgiving dinner taking thirds, fourths, even fifths.
How do you put your product, your name, your campaign in front of a userbase that is changing its likes and dislikes by the hour? How do you capitalize on the freemium world of internet marketing? How do you shoot a moving target? How do you bag a giant? The fact remains that online marketing over the social graph is an inexact science. For every Dr. Pepper campaign that flops there is going to be a Old Spice campaign that amazes.
Brands have to engage in a new media that is largely controlled by the user. Place your product in front of me in a way that entertains me, otherwise I’ll use ping.fm and bash you to some 2 million+ eyes in 7 seconds. Oh and by the way, there is nothing you can do about it. Marketing overlaid on the social graph needs to be interesting to a 15 year old, and worthwhile to a 30 year old.
If you came looking for answers, sorry, you came to the wrong place. Because there is no correct answer. But here’s a pretty fool-proof 3 point plan to avoid a Dr. Pepper-like fiasco:
1. Get the users involved in your campaign planning. Make them feel important by taking their suggestions, get some immediate feedback.
2. If you are going to play a hand make sure age, sex, race, or religion cards are NEVER played.
3. Porn jokes stopped being funny in boys’ high school locker rooms.
Seems like a fairly simple plan-of-attack. Don’t push the red button.
About Ryan Cox
