Social media is great way to communicate with your audience and consumers. However, without careful planning, it can blow up in your face. On the Internet, there are trolls that keep an eye out for chances to mess things up or make someone mad. For example, in August of this year, Mountain Dew introduced a new Granny Smith apple-flavored soft drink. They decided to have a little fun and let their fans name it, or as their slogan stated “Dub the Dew.”
This went horribly awry when members of 4Chan.org, a group of the Internet’s best hackers, most curious individuals and people with too much time, decided to get in on the voting.
The poll was on the Mountain Dew website, so an Anon [Anonymous member of 4Chan] banned people together to vote for some really goofy names. “Gushing Granny,” “Granny Squirts” and “Fap Apple” made their way on to the list. Mountain Dew came out and said they did not have to choose the top name, just one that was on the list. 4Chan accepted this challenge and continued to flood the poll and hack the site.
By the end of the contest, “Hitler Did Nothing Wrong” was at the top of the chart, there was no reasonable name left on the poll and the pranksters hacked the site with Rick Astley’s “Never Gonna’ Give You Up” as an unwarranted pop-up. According to one blog related to this social media fail, hackers went so far as to add “a banner that read “Mtn Dew salutes the Israeli Mossad for demolishing 3 towers on 9/11!”
Mountain Dew gave their public too much freedom. Their intent was good: use social media to interact with their fans and gain their input. However, the Internet trolls took control of the situation and created a social media blunder for the soft drink moguls.
My biggest takeaway point from this experience is that companies need to monitor social media more closely. When a situation starts to arise, they need to extinguish it before it gets out of hand.
They also need to use more tact when dealing with Internet trolls. Mountain Dew’s statement to the trolls could be seen as antagonistic. Had they just let it go, the pranksters would have lost interest, but since they engaged in such a way, the trolls had to have a little fun.
Before a company begins a social media campaign, they need to recognize how it could go wrong and figure out a quick and painless process to fix it. After all, Mountain Dew could have just deleted the poll.
#1 by Alissa Widman on September 23, 2012 - 12:31 am
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This is a great example of what happens when you don’t think before you post something. I think the biggest problem with Mountain Dew’s contest is the people who created the poll were too naive and didn’t consider possible problems that could arise from giving participants too much freedom. A simple alternative could have been to allow fans to email possible names to Mountain Dew, whose representatives could then narrow the names down to 10 choices that could be posted on a poll, rather than allowing fans to just post the names on their own. Deleting the poll could have created just as much backlash on another site as Mountain Dew’s statement that a name just had to “make the list” to win. It’s hard to say what would have been the best way to react to the situation. But if Mountain Dew had prevented the problem in the first place, it wouldn’t have had to devise a plan for damage control in the first place.
#2 by Kelsey Kula on September 24, 2012 - 10:10 pm
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This was very interesting and though it was a smart campaign idea, they should have been more prepared for hackers or pranksters. Having these titles on a companies website gives them a bad reputation and makes their PR and marketing departments look amateur. Once Mountain Dew saw these names pop up they should have removed them immediately and put more restrictions on what fans could write, warning them that inappropriate names and titles would be taken off. Even though Mountain Dew wanted to seem fair by not removing the fan’s titles, they should have drawn a line between fair and completely unnecessary. This was a good lesson for Mountain Dew. Keep close attention if you are going to give your fans that much freedom and be prepared to step in when things get out of hand.
#3 by Emily on September 25, 2012 - 6:03 pm
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This story reminds me of the current Lays campaign going on, where customers have the ability to recommend a new flavor. I wonder if they are having the same issues? In this case, I could not agree with you more that the company gave customers way too much freedom. When launching a campaign with this much feedback, a serious crisis management plan needs to be in place, when and if things like this happen!