When Social Media Is Not A Marketer's Friend

No matter how wonderful social media is among the marketing faithful, the content can sometimes become the foot that enters the mouth. Toyota tasted foot sandwich when a Saatchi & Saatchi- produced Yaris commercial was seen by Australian Facebook and You Tube viewers as too demeaning to women. Facebook negative reaction -- Hmmmm, sounds familiar to the Honda fiasco with Facebook (Read the Zimana blog article When Facebook Is Not A Marketer's Friend).

It is reasonable that Toyota (and Honda) would run into a troubling miscue, even when compared with Ford's notable success with the Fiesta Movement. Automakers can be very susceptible to social media mishaps because of the nature of the product -- a car or truck -- has many features that can provide benefits and sway a consumer to one vehicle vs. another. Trying to cram too many points into a short commercial, short radio ad, or an even shorter tweet can make message recall difficult. Or in this case bring shock by trying to be too clever to convey everything and sounding offensive in the process. The ad does bring pause: how could someone not see the problem with this? At the minimum the ad comes across as a left-over watered down Saturday Night Live ad.

There is an excellent mUmBRELLA analysis on Toyota's media mistake. The mUmBRELLA article raised great points about giving wide latitude to an agency inexperienced with PR -- social media essentially is PR with exponential impact, for good campaigns or bad. Companies have to really be a steward of the message, not just be clever and insulting. What works on Saturday Night Live or Monty Python really doesn't in the real world.

The ad was pulled from You Tube and Facebook, but many copies have sprouted up.

What do you think is important to know when using social media?