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.