@JulieGibbons Sweet! Now I can visit Romulus, or finally have a coffee chat with my wookie pen pals! in reply to JulieGibbons 3 hrs ago

A Chronology of Brands that Got Punk’d by Social Media

Categories: Challenges, Groundswell, Industry Index, Social MediaPosted on May 2nd, 2008

A list of companies that were blind-sided by the internet, they didn’t understand the impacts of the power shift to the participants, or how fast information would spread, or were just plain ignorant.

Criteria of “Punk’d” includes a situation where the story would have not been told if social media was not available, or if social media enhanced the situation.

This doesn’t include fake blogs, companies who deliberately tried to cheat the system get their own honorable mention.

Although this punk’d list is the one to stay off, the one you want to get on is the Groundswell awards.

Update: I’ve added severity status for some of these Punk’d using the Categorization of Brand Backlash Storms)


2010

iPunk’d: Mainstream News Falls for iPad “Beta Tester” Hoax
Flamboyant CEO and internet celebrity Jason Calacanis tweeted he was an early beta-tester for iPad, and ‘leaked’ out fake specs.  Mainstream media, who were hungry to break any news, published mis-stories, with a variety of accuracies. Among the over zealous journalists includes The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Wired, CNN Money, Reuters, Macworld, ComputerWorld, and Joystiq (couldn’t find article), more from Valleywag. Just goes to show that any lead is a story worth starting, fact checking not required, and Jason knows how to catch a media wave. (Category 2)

Cleanup in Aisle 8: Digital Fingerprints Exposes Wal-Mart’s Paid Supporter
A vocal online supporter of Wal-Mart opening in Chicago was allegedly unearthed ties back to Wal-Mart’s PR firm. In an era of digital footprints, the IP address was matched to the agency that represents Wal-Mart, the Chicagoist has some of the alleged discussion, on display. There’s three lessons here: 1) transparency in fiduciary relationships isn’t only ethical, it’s probably the law, when lobbying for a company while on payroll on the web (although FTC regulations tend to be fuzzy in my opinion) 2) This erodes trust of communities and the social web. 3) It’s disappointing to see Wal-Mart (or it’s partners) on this list again (see below) this is a good time to send a disclosure memorandum to all agency partners. (Category 2)

2009

Pepsi’s AMP iPhone App Encourages Guys To Score –Yet Results in a Penalty
Pepsi’s AMP brand which caters to young males created an iPhone application that arms studs with pickup lines for different categories of women.  This application gives young men to categorize women (geek, cougar, band girl and beyond) and offers pickup lines, useful information to relate to them and a ’scoring’ system after they’ve done the deed.  Unfortunately, a groundswell emerged from blogs and mainstream press forcing Pepsi’s hand to remove the app –and the offensive material. (Category 3)

Honda Product Manager Crashes Into His Own Comments
An overzealous product manager at Honda promotes his own product but fails to disclose his own relationship with the company –till the community calls him out. Honda responds by sheepishly removing his posts, due to lack of disclosure and not being a company representative. It should be recognized that every employee is a representative of the company –official or not. What’s needed? Training, internal policies, and a safe place to practice. (Category 2)

Digerati Dooce Sends Maytag/Whirlpool to the Cleaners
Consumer activism or celebrity abuse?  Popular blogger and Twitterati (over 1 million followers) had problems with her brand new Whirlpool machine and took to her social tools to discuss, complain, and suggest a boycott till her machine was fixed, read her chronicle, and what happened next as it spread to Forbes.  Not sure what Whirlpool could have done to avoid this –all customer experiences good and bad are exposed on the social web, how does a brand know when they’re talking to an influencer?  They don’t. (Category 3)

Property Manager Sues Over Moldy Tweet –Infecting Their Own Brand
A tenent in a Chicago apartment who had 20 followers in Twitter was sued by property manager for saying: “Who said sleeping in a moldy apartment was bad for you? Horizon realty thinks it’s OK.” is being sued for $50k for defamation.  As a result, this incident has received global attention on the Associated Press, Chicago Tribune and major news outlets.  This may have caused self-damage to Horizon as prospective customers may search Google for Horizon and see how they publically sued a customer.  Horizon later issued a statement regarding their intention to “sue first, ask questions later” (Category 3)

Decrescendo For United Airlines After “Breaking Guitar” Song
A musican scorned is a scary thing –add YouTube and the whole world can see.   Dave Carroll claims he saw United baggage handlers toss his custom guitar, then complained with no resolution.  He turned to what he knows best, and created a song and shared it with the world.  More from LA times who says that after the song started to get popular, United changed their tune from minor chords to major, thanks to Mark for submitting. (Category 3)

Fire Sale: Furniture Company Habitat Self-Evicts on Twitter

Stylish furninture maker Habitat jumped on the Twitter bandwagon, but this time, tags it’s self-promotionary tweets with popular trending topics such as the Iran election.  What’s this the same as?  Parasite marketing.   As a result, the Twitter community strikes back, and Habitat retreats.  To their defense, they’re just the ones that got called out -there’s a bunch of spammers doing this now.  Thanks Mark for the submission (Category 2)

Contest for Bloggers Results in Asus Losing
Computer manufacturer Asus hosted a sponsored contest where bloggers could review their products –then the community could vote on the best review.  Asus, not happy with the honest (but not that shiny review) review from one blogger, decided to shift the rules to benefit a more positive review.  Backlash ensues, read comments, link via Ian Fogg (Category 2)

Snotty Dominos Employees YouTube Themselves To Court
Millions are grossed out by two Dominos employees who uploaded a video to YouTube of them blowing snot on pizzas at a Dominos stores. Interestingly, the crowd was able to pinpoint their location, they’ve now been fired and are facing felony charges, NYTs has more. Thanks to Josh for the tip. (Category 3, and perhaps 4 if this doesn’t get cleaned up)

Buying Friends? Belkin pays for Positive Reviews
This scandal leaves consumers not sure if they can trust the positive reviews about Belkin products. As one employee offered to pay users of Amazon’s Mechnical Turk to write positive reviews. As Belkin was exposed, they issued a mea culpa suggesting this was an isolated event, but now, it’s suggested that these orders came from executives. (Category 2, yet if the Fed gets involved, it go to Category 3 or 4)

2008

Motrin Gets Headache From Twittering Moms
A well-intended Motrin ad launched towards baby carrying moms triggered them to revolt on twitter. On this quiet weekend it spread to blogs, YouTube, and then mainstream press. Some argue the moms were acting more like a mob, Motrin didn’t test it’s copy with the target audience up front –leaving everyone with a splitting headache. (Category 2)

CNN Falls For Rumor –Sinking Apple Stock
A rumor created by community created news site iReport that falsified CEO Steve Jobs having a heart attack spread to mainstream media website CNN, and caused a dip in stock price. User generated content will always have the risk of falsified content. (Category 4)

Exxon Mobil Brandjacked in Twitter
The twitter community (myself included) was eager to embrace “Janet” a no holds barred up front in your face corporate representative that was ready to tackle the hard issues –sometimes without grace. Unfortunately, to the Twittersphere’s surprise and Exxon, Janet, is not an official company representative she claimed to be. Read the story to unravel the multiple angles to this unique case. (Category 2)

JC Penney Brandjacked by Fake “Sex” Ad
We’re seeing more ads being created. In this case a ‘third party vendor’ (agency, I think) created this and submitted it to Cannes. JC Penney wasn’t happy and had it removed from YouTube. Unfortunately, blogs picked it up and it will never go away, video is here, I know you want to click. (Category 2)

Louis Vuitton gets Brandjacked in Anti-Genocide Campaign
Artist creates and sells T-shirt demonstrating how the media turns a deaf ear to real world tradgeies such as genocide in Dafur, infringing on LV logo. LV fires back, with lawsuit, a groundswell begins. Submitted by Søren Storm Hansen (Category 2)

Burger King exec trash talks using daughter’s email
Not sure why he didn’t just create a new email address, that would have been a lot safer. Submitted by Hilker. (Category 3)

Johnson and Johnson to bloggers: Hurry up and get dis-invited
Sounds like a mis-coordination, bad timing, and not a well thought through process that ended up getting scobleized, and Maryamized. (Category 2)

Anonymous Unmasks Church of Scientology
The church of Scientology has been criticized by an anonymous group, a faceless mass that has created videos, staged marches and protests, and is subvert the Church from around the internet. (Category 2)

Marvel nearly cuts of bloggers from Iron Man screening
Techcrunch (700,000 + subscribed) who intended to host a screening for loyal tech readers (perhaps a perfect audience of tech bloggers) were cut off by Marvel. Techcrunch is known for copy and pasting legal notes right onto the blog, fortunatly, things were quickly resolved. (Category 2)

Target-ed by Bloggers
A blogger complained about an indecent ad that portrayed as demeaning to women, complained and was shoved off by a Target representative. Story now on NYTimes, little things, can be big.

2007


Target’s Rounders program “This is our secret game”

Target encouraged it’s premier members in the rounders program to pump up it’s brand in a Facebook group, sadly, the covert operation ended up on blogs and then mainstream media

HD DVD Decoded by Digg, unDugg, then Dugg again
Digg users publish HD code, industry freaks out, Digg maintains stance.

Wholefoods CEO caught being a troll
Whole Foods CEO, was anonymously trashing competitors and pumping company up on Yahoo finance boards. (Category 3)

Delta holds customers hostage
What’s worse than being held prisoner on Delta’s dirty plane? (Video), watching the crew getting off da plane. Oh, and no food, crying babies, but one talented videographer. (Category 3)

Taco Bell’s infestation crawls into YouTube
A minor rat problem moved it’s way to YouTube, spreading faster and farther than expected, a total of more than one million views for all videos. Submitted by Graham Hill (Category 3)

Facebook Party with Molson ends up with Hangover
Molson invited folks to share party pics in Facebook, including with youth, which resulted in a backlash from community and parents. Molson withdrew the campaign and went home early –no more Facebook partying for this brand.

2006

Data storage blogger posts industry price lists, sales reps cry f#ck!
Robin Harris, one of the most well known of the data storage blogosphere posts price lists that were received from various customers.

Dell Laptop Explodes, news at 11 –via YouTube
More bad news for Dell, as laptops explode in Japan, all can see online.

ZZZ… Comcast suffers from Narcolepsy
Sleepy Techician caught on YouTube, then fired. Also see Comcast must die blog, submitted by Jeff Jarvis. (Category 3)

Hitachi “Hell” Gets The Finger
Angry customer gets bad service, writes long experience, and flips off HQ in picture, he’s also an influencer in the gaming community. (Category 2)

The Naked NOKA Chocolate Uncovered
A premium chocolatier (Noka) had a tremendous markup ($309- $2,080 per pound) of their secretly re-packaged chocolate, was exposed as a fraud and spread on blogs. And their google results is really painful. Submitted by Whitney.

AOL Holds Customers Hostage –Then Gets Canceled
This guy really bothers me, I can see why Vincent Ferrari was miffed. It’s clear, he was dealing with the customer retention department. Nothing worse than the feeling of being held hostage. Submitted by David Alston.

Airplane Fiasco’s Spread Online: JetBlue
There are so many examples, such as a YouTube testimonial about JetBlue’s 8+ hours stranded in terminal. Related: JetBlue’s CEO responds after flights are cut months later due to storm.

Starbucks Brandjacked by YouTube Video
Who wants a tasty frappuccino when there are kids starving? This was one of the first cases of brandjacking we saw.

2005

Why we Dwell on Dell Hell
Jeff Jarvis launches blog post that sends a flurry of PR negativty at Dell’s poor service, it’s since been improved.(Category 3)

2004

Kryptonite unlocked
Locks were disabled using a simple bic pen cap, spread on forums and blogs, one of the earliest examples that got mainstream attention. (Category 3)

Wives of EA beg for spouses back on blog
Call HR? Forget it, call Livejournal. This early incident from a wife of a game developer complains on a blog –getting national attention from press and media. As a result, EA did make some changes to their work and lifestyles of their employees. (Category 3)

2003

The Barbera Streisand Effect
Singer star tries to remove content from internet, it all goes downhill from there. I actually learned about this from reading my colleagues Groundswell book (Category 2)

2001

Apple’s dirty little secret plastered over NYC
Apparently, 18 months is all the iPod will run before you’ll need to buy a new one, says this video, where street teams went around defacing ads. Submitted by David Churbuck (I got his name right this time)

Also see: 8 Groundswell Examples: News, Education, Religion, Cops, Restaurants, Music, Conferences, and Analysts


I know I’m missing others, please leave a comment, and I’ll credit you

Update: I added CNN in April 2009 to the punk’d list for their CNNbrk account, I found out later, that it indeed was not an example of a brandjacking, but instead CNN helped foster the relationship with the non-employee creator James Cox, who sent me an email and explained.

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  • What about Walmart's fake blog?
  • This doesn't include fake blogs, companies who deliberately tried to cheat the system get their own honorable mention.
  • I'd add Bob Garfield's ComcastMustDie.com.
  • Frymaster, that's not exactly an example of Comcast being blindsided, although it certainly isn't a nice story.

    Hilker, good find, added, and my first 2008 mention

    Robin, that belongs to my 'fake blogs' list, which is listed at the very top of the post. That's a special spot that gets it's very own coverage

    Jeff, So good to see you here, when I google "Dell Hell" your post no longer comes up, I suspect you forgave them and removed or renamed the post. I think it's deserving.
  • I'd include the Chevy Tahoe debacle on that list as a classic of not thinking a "social media" idea all the way through.

    Lumping together blogging and the social media tools that allow for fast distribution, Noka Chocolates could fit as well.

    The PS3 Song seems to fit, as well: it might actually act as a representative for all of the YouTube cases (Microsoft, Apple, and a host of other companies have suffered through extremely popular criticism videos spread via YouTube.

    I've got a list of other examples filed somewhere other other, and it's a long list...
  • Didn't find the list, but a search pulled up an old email that seems relevant to the topic at hand:

    "I've never seen Web 2.0 destroy a marketing plan...I *have* seen plenty of cases where Web 2.0 made it painfully apparent that a marketing plan had failed, but that seems like a very different thing.

    Getting off my pedantic high horse for a moment, I'd say that it's certainly true that marketers no longer have the ability to dictate what a brand is, or stands for, unless customers agree with the marketer's position. I'll also say that I'm not sure that's really a problem.

    The example that I've been using recently is Microsoft's launch of the Zune music player. That "welcome to the social" launch campaign defined the new brand, and it seemed to be generally well thought out.

    The problem, however, was that the actual product didn't jive with the marketing campaign, and once the product was out there in the wild it became increasingly clear that the brand was...well, just marketing.

    Plenty of people talked about the Zune, and a fair number of them even liked it, but because there was a huge disconnect between the marketing-defined "brand" that Microsoft wanted and the actual product that customers were experiencing and/or interacting with, the Zune brand suffered pretty heavily."
  • The Neistat Brothers and the iPod's dirty secret
    http://www.neistat.com/movies/ipodsdirtysecret/...
  • ooooohhhhhhhhhhhh! This is a good one Jeremiah!
  • Whitney, the Chevy Tahoe ad was actually deemed a success, as I understand it. Not really a punk'd.

    Noka chocolate, I could only read 3 of the 10 pages, what's the summary?

    Per your second comment, the examples on the post have nothing to do with marketing campaigns, some of these companies were totally blind sided. They weren't even prepared, and yes their brand was damaged.

    Do a search for "Dell support" and you'll see Jeremy Zawody's blog post on "What the fuck is wrong with Dell support"
  • David, Good find, I've never even heard of that one.
  • Hey there -

    I suppose the Chevy Tahoe/Apprentice campaign may have been deemed a success, but when the first Google result for "chevy tahoe ad" is still a link to a story entitled "Chevy's 'Make Your Own Tahoe Commercial' idea not exactly going as planned" I think we might want to call it a qualified success. :)

    Noka brands itself as an extremely high quality (and very expensive) chocolatier. A local food blog in Dallas ran an extensive story claiming (pretty convincingly) that Noka's chocolates were just cheaper chocolate repackaged and repriced. The spread, starting from the food blog circuit, was fast and huge.

    The second comment was from an email in reply to the question "have you seen Web2.0 destroy a brand's marketing plan?" which I think applies to both specific campaigns and overall brand.
  • Whitney, thanks for the clarifications, Noka makes the cut
  • Hey there Jeremiah,

    Would Vincent Ferrari's "Cancel the account" video and resulting impact on AOL be one for 2006? - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xmpDSBAh6RY

    Great list BTW.

    Cheers David
  • Hey there Jeremiah,

    Would Vincent Ferrari's "Cancel the account" audio recording of him trying to cancel his AOL and the resulting hop to mainstream coverage after going viral on the internet be one for 2006? - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xmpDSBAh6RY

    Great list BTW.

    Cheers David
  • David

    That's a classic one, thanks, can't believe I forgot that.
  • Walmart's application for college students on Facebook became a magnet for negative comments. Groundswell mentions more on this in chapter 4. Thanks for the good list.
  • Doug

    Good one, there are negative comments about Wal-Mart everywhere, (and in real life too) so I'm not sure if this is a true punk'd example.
  • where's sony's messup and walmart? both 2007 early
  • Hi Jeremiah
    This list is excellent tool for explaining companies the importance to monitoring the web.
    Thank you!!!
  • Allen Stern

    I put the Fake blogs (FLOGS) on it's own separate list

    http://www.web-strategist.com/blog/2007/10/11/l...
  • Unfolding as we speak: Louis Vuitton vs. Darfur. Maybe a little early for conclusions.

    On Facebook:
    http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=12685622005

    On Digg:
    http://digg.com/tech_news/Louis_Vuitton_Sues_Da...
  • Soren

    Great find, I read all the articles, and joined the FB group.

    I need to see a little bit more traction to show this was a groundswell against LV.
  • José Luis
    This story on tasers from techdirt has all the potential to appear on this list in near future:

    http://techdirt.com/articles/20080504/221336102...
  • Jeremiah

    My personbal favourites are:

    The Sprint 1,000
    http://www.customerthink.com/blog/sprint_fires_...
    Sprint fires unprofitable customers for costs largely of Sprint's own making

    Taco Bell's New York Rat Problem
    http://www.customerthink.com/blog/more_on_rats_...
    The TV footage speaks for itself. Picked up off The Church of the Customer blog.

    British Telecom Apologiese to Irate Customer on YouTube
    http://www.customerthink.com/blog/why_customer_...
    The YouTube story tells it all here too.

    Great post.

    Graham Hill
    Independent CRM Consultant
    Interim CRM Manager
  • Jeremiah - I would add the Engadget/T-Mobile story for 2008 as well.

    http://www.visinsights.com/t-mobile-and-engadge...

    Blake Cahill
    Visible Technologies
  • Blake

    I reviewed this one, I didn't see any evidence that this was a groundswell, other than from the Engadget team. Did it explode into other areas?
  • Graham

    Taco bell, added

    Thanks!
  • A couple of items from the Linkedin Marketing 2.0 Web site:

    Harry Reid's (US House Majority Leader) brand new Website -- strictly Web 1.0
    http://www.marketingtwo.com/jerry-yangs-post-go...

    Credibility of Jerry Yang's comments on Microsoft's withdrawal.
    http://www.marketingtwo.com/jerry-yangs-post-go...
  • Jhonka
    Jeremiah what do you think about these two examples?

    MiiVii - a honeypot for p2p users
    http://digitaldaily.allthingsd.com/20070705/mii...

    MediaDefender emails leaked
    http://online.wsj.com/article/SB118998414197229...
  • The Church of Scientology is getting punked big time - leaks of all sorts on YouTube, the rise of Anonymous, countless Tom Cruise parodies etc.
  • Good one Linda, I'll add this
  • I think you have another Social Media disaster to add to your list.

    NBC tried to control the timing of the news of Tim Russert's passing in order to inform the family. We can all appreciate NBC intentions, but this is 2008 and their plan didn't work. An employee of a partner organization updated Russert's Wikipedia entry with news of his death 40 minutes before NBC announced the news. NBC, upon learning of the Wikipedia update, changed Russert's entry back, erasing the accurate information that had been posted. NBC is now embarrassed by the incident, and the person who leaked the news has reportedly lost his job.

    "It seems that NBC, much like The Associated Press and other old-media businesses, hasn’t yet grasped that news is no longer published in a top-down manner."
    http://blogs.mediapost.com/online_examiner/?p=1763

    "It's one thing for a news organization to decide to delay reporting news of a staffer's death out of deference to his or her family (this makes sense). It's another for the organization to expect other organizations to follow the same policy. And it is yet another thing for someone to deliberately strike accurate facts from a collective record to appease an upset client, which is what someone at IBS apparently did."
    http://www.alleyinsider.com/2008/5/nbc_scooped_...

    "NBC, of all organizations, should know what to do with news. They have been a trusted source for decades. For them to fumble in this way - to not be able to pick up the phone to call the family immediately, to fail to keep in contact with folks who could tell them it’s OK to run the story, to have to get the news out of an reporter’s death and to presumably get the exclusive - is an egregious chain of failure that led to what can only be described as a debacle."
    http://www.crunchgear.com/2008/06/23/employee-f...
  • Brand jacking is a big issue and not enough companies/brands are protecting themselves. I have also written about this: http://www.sociallyminded.co.uk/2008/07/stop-th...
  • How bout the Aussie tourism ad that was 'remade' by an agency looking for some timely self-promo, Jeremy?
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=411ueiat2sY
  • Jeremiah, a great example of a brand hijack is what just happened to TrustyPig, a web service that completely ripped off the UI, logo and design of SmartyPig.com (based here in Des Moines). Local tweeps, bloggers and loyal SmartyPig customers performed a brand hijack using Twitter and SEO.

    More details can be found here:
    http://getanewbrowser.com/2008/08/trustypig-soc...
    http://blog.smartypig.com/read/weve-got-a-lot-t...
    http://www.lavarow.com/2008/08/14/smartypig-vs-...
  • what about the coke and mentos youtube commercials. Coke got a lot of bad press when they tried to get the youtube videos pulled and later embraced the viral videos with a micro site.
    http://www.whatsnextblog.com/archives/2006/06/c...

    Also, a similar scandal happened when Mad Men's AMC tried to kick off several fan fiction impersonators from their show-inspired Twitter persona's. I know this happened well after this post, but its a good addition.
    http://blog.stratiusgroup.com/2008/09/04/mad-me...
  • And don't forget Martin Eisenstadt, the source of "Sarah Palin doesn't know if Africa is a country or continent." The Republican brand was punk'd big time.
    http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/13/arts/televisi...
  • As you requested via Twitter DM today, here's a Punk'd Example unique to Canada.

    Our Federal Government tabled revised legislation to our Copyright Act earlier this year. I was supposedly designed to protect both the music industry and consumers.

    There was such a huge negative reaction from consumers in all social media plus numerous FaceBook Groups that the Gov't pulled their proposed legislation and sent it back to the drawing board. It still has not re-tabled it in parliament.

    @GaryFPatton
  • Understandably there's a power shift as far as communication goes. But with this recent storm against Motrin by mommy bloggers, don't you feel that some social media folks (or those more transparent than others) think because they 'get' SM mediums and transparency, that they're just allowed to run apesh*t over anything they feel is wrong.

    Sure people were offended and that's fine but it was a helluva storm that was hit on Motrin, more than that was needed IMO.

    Don't you think that has an adverse effect on our industry and how big businesses continue to perceive us. The message is lost and all that's remembered is the mob.
  • And then there was the Street Team "Stiped Disaster" of MTV and the Knight Foundation. I recently got two letters from the Company saying they are completely renovating the way they pay freelancers! Yay for Citizen Journalists!

    http://gawker.com/5115067/whistleblower-mtv-swe...
  • Hey, Jeremiah. Ad Age Digital dug up this cool Unilever example for '09. Orangutan (suits) teach uUnilever a lesson in viral video: Result? Unilever is negotiating with Greenpeace. [http://jijr.com/h8cm0
  • Sorry, typo in the url: this is the Unilever example: http://jijr.com/h8cm
  • JimmySixBellies
    Hi Jeremy.

    As requested by tweet:

    We're all familiar with Skittles' great social media ploy (via Agency.com) - switching their homepage to the Twitter search results for #skittles. Great idea, but they not only didn't register a Twitter account but also completely failed to engage with any Twitter users or provoke a debate, causing their homepage to become a haven for those looking to subvert what they saw as a pretty cynical viral marketing campaign with adverse comments about the brand (many of which were pretty near the knuckle). As one blog commenter put it, it was "like stealing candy from an ad agency".

    There are hundreds of blogs on the subject. Among them:

    http://bit.ly/B1cj8
    http://bit.ly/DRT2J
    http://bit.ly/QWEI
  • EAGS
    He definitely isn't/shouldn't be ignorant on the topic, but the Fedex/Twitter situation certainly started a discussion:
    http://www.thekeyinfluencer.com/channel/2009/01...
  • Jimmy

    I'm very familiar with the Skittles case, but I'm not sure they got inadvertently punkd here. Isn't this a case of some pieces missing in the deployment? I would argue that the amount of buzz generated for skittles was a huge win. At this time, I'm leaning on leaving them off this list, but I'm open to more dialog on this.
  • Not arguing the list, and I agree with Skittles getting an overall PR win from their Twitter homepage, but… How would you classify the Pepsico Ampd app debacle? They got major coverage, although negative, for Amp, one of their smaller brands. And I would argue the press was not bad at all for their target audience, young men.
  • EAGS

    Yup, I've spoken to the Fedex folks directly, and wrote a post about Keyinfluencer and Fedex. I'm not sure this is a punking, but really a minor issue that resulted in a larger flare up. It wasn't really a punking of the brand, but perhaps a personal mistake --and a funky response from the brand.

    I'm leaning on leaving this one off the list too, unless you can suggest others?
  • ASHATL
    Would you consider KFC's latest giveaway via Oprah/Twitter a flop or a winner?
  • Great post - this is a really useful resource. Thank you!
  • J:
    Busted link on Apple on WSJ. This one isn't loading: http://blogs.wsj.com/digits/2008/10/03/high-tec...
  • Great list!

    What about Bacardi's fail with "Get an Ugly Girlfriend campaign"? Got pretty much punk'd by blogs and Twitterazi. http://www.viralblog.com/social-media/bacardi-f...
  • Thanks Jeremiah, this list is really useful. Great case studies for brand to learn from others mistakes before joining the conversation.
  • Would you consider a small-biz example: http://www.thestate.com/gamecocks/story/871489....
  • How about Twitter getting punk'd by the Techcrunch hacker?
  • Thanks Jason but that was a security issue --not a social media one.
  • For a medium that moves so fast, your collection of stories is pretty timeless. Kudos!
  • Hi There,

    Thanks for sharing and keeping the list up to date. There were a fair few examples there that I haven't heard of before. Will be interesting to see how this trend continues.

    Jason
  • Great collection, Jeremy. Amazing to many how fast the world changes now that people can 'talk' to each other anywhere, any time.
  • This list needs Nissan's Horrendous Hypercube campaign (Canada)

    Critique/Analysis: http://www.marketingmag.ca/english/news/markete...

    Outright muckraking: http://www.encyclopediadramatica.com/Hypercube
  • Very good post. The Dominos Pizza youtube incident is a GREAT example of how social media can really damage reputation.
  • I'm constantly reminding people of the ethics involved in what we do. Thank you for compiling this list! I will definitely be sharing this one...
  • This one always comes to mind (do you have Barry Scott/Cillit Bang in the US?).

    http://www.plasticbag.org/archives/2005/09/on_c...
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