Archive for September, 2012

4 comments

Does Ragú really ‘hate dads?’


2012
09.22

Tags: , , , , , ,
Posted in Social Media | 4 Comments »

When initiating a viral social media campaign, companies should never ignore the concerns of the audience they’re trying to reach.

They also should never send a spam tweet that could be considered offensive to a marketing expert with a well-established Internet presence.

Ragú, a popular spaghetti sauce brand owned by food giant Unilever, unfortunately did both last year when attempting to launch a Twitter marketing campaign with a video of mom bloggers criticizing their husbands’ poor cooking habits. The two-minute video — which is, admittedly, rather boring and condascendingly sexist — was sent via spam messages from Ragú’s Twitter account to a few dads with an Internet presence.

Ragú’s solution for dads who can’t cook? Use their sauce — it makes cooking easier for the seemingly incompetent male population. The brand’s social media managers most likely thought dads would find the campaign amusing, blog or tweet a response to the mom bloggers, and then spread the message.

Responses from dads, however, were anything but amused. Many criticized Ragú’s video for implying men are incapable of cooking (and, likewise, that women are more apt to do housework-type activities like cooking, circa 1950s). A prominent blogger, author and online marketing expert, C.C. Chapman, received the tweet and immediately took to his blog to criticize its poor taste with a post entitled “Ragú hates dads.” Soon after, he kindly offered the company advice on how to improve its strategies for the future. But he also vowed he would never consider buying Ragú.

Chapman wrote a few follow-up blog posts and it took Ragú almost 24 hours respond. Finally, the brand contacted Chapman and later posted a generalized response that still didn’t leave Chapman or other dad bloggers satisfied. You can read it here.

As Chapman said in his blog posts, I think whoever planned Ragú’s Twitter campaign was severely unaware of how to successfully engage an audience with social media. The campaign touched on a sensitive subject in a discriminatory manner that could be offensive to some people. Ragú sent the message to several dads in an impersonal way, and when they responded negatively, Ragú took too look to reply — and even when it did, there was no real person to interact with, just someone hidden behind the persona of a jar of sauce.

Social media should be a two-way conversation between a company and its consumers. When Ragú’s Twitter campaign went awry, it went silent. It was a poor marketing strategy that left the brand more damaged than when it had started.

I don’t think Ragú really “hates dads” — but it certainly doesn’t know how to interact with them on social media.

1 Comment

Social media is our generation’s second nature — why not capitalize on it?


2012
09.15

Tags: , , , , , , , , ,
Posted in Social Media | 1 Comment »

Doesn’t an ages-old saying state “You can’t teach an old dog new tricks?”

It appears a handful of company owners and Internet gurus want to challenge that mindset, based on some articles and blog posts surfacing online.

Authors are advocating for businesses to think before they hire young college graduates to operate their social media services. It appears they want to teach older employees how to use social media, rather than hire someone new who already has the skills to utilize it.

A recent article in Inc. Magazine is bold enough to blatantly warn business owners “a 23-year-old shouldn’t run your social media” in its headline. Although the author contradictorily retracts the generalization in the first sentence of her article, the statement still irks me, because it is hugely inaccurate.

A majority of the Inc. article’s 11 reasons to not hire fresh college graduates to manage social media services are based more on stereotypes of younger adults than on fact. (For example, this statement: “… if you hire a young person to manage your social media, you may also need to need to worry about how he or she is actually spending his or her time. Will you need to be monitoring the person?)

I hope businesses would conduct normal hiring practices when considering to hire someone for a position to manage social media. I agree, it is foolish for a company to hire someone strictly based on their young age, but it is also foolish to assume a younger person is too immature to handle a position if they are more qualified than any other candidates for the job.

While interning at The Columbus Dispatch this summer, I met a younger staff member who was hired a few years after she graduated college to help operate the newspaper’s Internet presence, including its Website, Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest and Tumblr. She works with a Web staff of several people. When she gave an engaging presentation to the interns about social media it was clear she knew more about it than the rest of the staff members combined.

She taught us — no one had to teach her. And she was definitely mature enough and skilled enough to handle the position.

Social media is second nature to a majority of recent college graduates. Hiring a young employee with fresh ideas — someone who is responsible, hard-working and knows how social media works — is not a bad idea. If the new hire has the right credentials, it’s smart and cost-effective.

A person’s age shouldn’t be the only reason he or she is hired. But if a person is qualified, age shouldn’t be a reason he or she isn’t hired, either.

3 comments

Politwoops: revealing U.S. politicians’ deleted tweets since 2012


2012
09.08

Tags: , , , , , ,
Posted in Twitter | 3 Comments »

When you delete an unsightly tweet from your Twitter feed, it’s gone for good, right?

Wrong.

Several United States politicians learned this the hard way this summer following the launch of a new watchdog website, Politwoops. The project follows the official Twitter accounts of members of Congress, President Barack Obama and numerous presidential candidates to track when they delete tweets and to record the elapsed time before removal.

Politwoops’ archiving system has already accumulated thousands of tweets since its May unveiling by The Sunlight Foundation, an Internet-based nonprofit organization with a goal of holding government officials accountable. Deleted tweets range from those containing minor typos to embarrassingly honest revelations — but unfortunately for the politicians, their attempts to permanently delete their messages are just too little too late.

I read about Politwoops this summer when it attracted the attention of news outlets across the country and the website immediately interested me. It illustrates how, as we’ve discussed in class, nothing “deleted” on the Internet ever disappears permanently.

This topic is revisited often. For example, the Library of Congress announced in April 2010 it acquired the entire Twitter archive, meaning every tweet sent since Twitter’s inception — and every tweet for, presumably, the rest of history — will be digitally archived, regardless if it’s deleted soon after.

The thought makes some people uneasy. Others, especially those who enjoy scrutinizing public officials, are overwhelmingly in favor of websites like Politwoops. As a journalist, I’m in the latter category, and I praise The Sunlight Foundation’s initiative to keep Congress in check.

Anyone utilizing social media, regardless if they’re a politician, should use strict discretion when determining what he or she publicly posts. Information unveiled on the Internet is permanent, despite the availability of the misleading “delete” button. Instead of tweeting carelessly and then deleting offensive tweets as a form of reactive damage control, social media users should be proactive and follow a simple rule: think before you tweet.

And if you’re still not convinced, head over to Politwoops and check out its up-to-the-minute RSS feed. It contains plenty of great examples of what happens when you don’t use discretion before hitting the “tweet” button.

Skip to toolbar