Social media is no longer a fad but a way
of life for big and small businesses.
Using this platform for advertising and gaining of customers can be very
effective as well as cost efficient. In
return the user must also understand social media and the audience that uses it
to keep from having something wrap around you and impeding your true feelings,
no pun intended.
Every company or
organization is entitled to one major mistake but will some ever learn their
lesson. In 2011, Durex a leading condom
maker started an ad campaign in South Africa by # hashtagging jokes on their
twitter site. Condom’s already a
sensitive subject for many people took strong criticism because of some very
offensive jokes and some other twitter followers added their own jokes. Remember these followers cared more for
making a funny than offending the company’s targeted consumers. Later a women’s activist group FeministSA and
“led a campaign against the condom company, issuing complaints and starting
boycott,” of the product. To continue
the grave digging they at first defended the campaign before dropping it going
as far as posting “We have posted many jokes, see our timeline…..And they not
violent against woman! Re-read it!!!!!!”
Am I now under the impression that the company only wants men to buy
their product? Later the company did
drop their joke hashtagging and publically apologized publically Mark that up
to mistake one, lesson learned, until June 2012. 
Since Twitter didn’t work out so well for Durex they turned to Facebook for another try at a social media campaign. This campaign leads to more of misunderstanding rather than pure offensiveness. Durex was advertising an application know as SOS condoms which anyone at any time can use the application and get a condom delivered to them discreetly and quickly. This is a clever move for mostly advertising and yes if it is used maybe the ability to stop unwanted pregnancies and disease control. So ask yourself did Durex with the vast amount of recourses to do research of several markets of larger cities or cities with high birth rates and sexual transmitted disease rates or did they turn to social media? As you can see from the title of this blog Durex used their Facebook followers to help decide which city this service should go to. Yes, I am for sure these followers are from the corporate office or major shareholders voting for the city and growth of their company. Would you believe that Batman won out for the city that would get the condom SOS service? Batman is the capital city of very conservative, Muslim populated city. Bad thought process in marketing, misunderstanding of who follows, and jokesters strike again. Rather than setting up different major cities to choose from they leaned on the mature support from their followers, a condom company if you have forgot.
Social media can be
used by individuals, companies, and organizations for various productive
reasons. It is clear that even the
smartest of business minds must hire or find a way to eliminate the negative
responses that can come from mismanagement that can be produced from social
media. This becomes a full time job if
these groups continue to use these mediums as information outlets. They must be prepared and have plans in place
to counter the negative as well as reinforce the positive actions.
I am sure many who voted for Batman where thinking of the character, not the Muslim city. Hilarious, almost predictable results.
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