Social Marketing gone wrong, the Wal-Mart case
Posted by Admin @ August 31st, 2007 in Social Marketing
When you start a webpage on a social network site to give your customers the chance to praise your product, 77 suggests you first make sure that you are actually liked.
Wal-Mart’s Facebook page is covered in bad comments on the company’s policies regarding employee wages and union memberships,
Emerce (Dutch) lets us know.
Visitors of Wal-Mart’s room decoration page can leave comments; a function intended to receive praise on the decoration tool, or a few suggestions for improvement at worst. Wal-Mart did probably not expect to have their complete Facebook Wall filled with criticism on its low wages, aversion to trade unions and unhealthy competition practices.
Marketers should keep this story in mind when offering customers the option to make their opinions public. You could even have many satisfied customers, but when you can expect a small group of ‘brand terrorists’ to vent their frustrations for the whole world to see, you might want to think twice about opening a brand page on a social network site.
Last 5 posts in Social Marketing
- Facebook: The Movie. Too soon? - August 28th, 2008
- 10+ OpenSocial Videos and Tutorials for social networks - August 4th, 2008
- Cartier uses the power of MySpace to appeal to new audiences - August 1st, 2008
- Social Networks at war on YouTube - July 30th, 2008
- Facebook tweaks user profiles and refuses to stay behind MySpace - July 28th, 2008
Brilliant, thanks for the heads-up