In the rapid fire internet time, brands can’t afford to have a divided message when social sharing.  I can understand why companies think it’s risky to interact online with consumers after watching the Kenneth Cole debatcle unfold on Thursday followed by the Super Bowl ad gaff by Groupon on Sunday.

The tweet by Kenneth Cole was in short, distasteful.  The internets were fired up and pointing the blowtorch at Kenneth Cole. Someone deleted the tweet from his stream, followed up with a tweet pointing folks to an apology on Facebook.  As a side note, they can’t seem to get their stories straight.  It wasn’t a joke, it was a joke, it was a prank…..seems to make the apology ring hallow.  This beauty seems to signal they knew exactly what they were doing:

Photo by @mikest on flickr

You’d think that brands would be treading lightly following that, but Groupon was in a tight spot.  Reportedly paying $3M for ad spots during the Super Bowl, they were to be tongue in cheek “parody of a celebrity-narrated, PSA-style commercial that you think is about some noble cause (such as “Save the Whales”), but then it’s revealed to actually be a passionate call to action to help yourself (as in “Save the Money”)?” (quote taken from Groupon’s blog post regarding their ads).

It makes one wonder if the marketing department at Groupon didn’t consider that their message would be taken similarly. Seriously, guys?

Still, it does seem like their hands were tied.  The money was spent and pulling the ads would cost revenue. They were being aired to potential subscribers Groupon.  Their blog post seems to point at their decision making process on the ads.

I find I’m fascinated with the question on the pros and cons of pulling the ads.  Should they have?  What did they have to lose and gain by airing or not airing?  Was the results worth the risk?  Did the marketing folks at Groupon even consider it a risk?  Did they lose subscribers as a result?  Will that hurt them or will the influx of subscribers as a result of the ad offset that?

What would I have done?  I would have called the ad company in question and requested that savethemoney.org be added to the last screen of the commercial making it clear that they were trying to do some social good.  Would that cost a chunk of change?  Probably.  Right thing to do though?  I think so.

When expressing an off the wall sense of humor to the world who may not follow, it’s always best to err on the side of caution lest you rile the masses.  I find it hard to believe that no one called into question that perhaps some people wouldn’t take it well.  (In the case of KC, well, how many of us run our tweets by others before we send?)

So what do you do as consumers if you were offended?  Well I follow what my friend, Christopher Penn asked over on his blog following KC’s tweet on Thursday: Do you take action that matters, that has an impact on the brands in question?

It all really comes down to having some amount of common sense which multi-million dollar companies can afford to do with focus groups and gut checks.  Those two things would have likely prevented either situation from occurring.  Just because we live in a super speedy world doesn’t mean we need to leave behind the basics to keep up.

Monday Morning Brand Quarterbacking

12 more days until Podcamp Boston 4! & Work – Hire me?

It’s important to me to do a great job for my clients and to make this Podcamp Boston rock for all of you this year.  So I have a good excuse for not blogging.

We’re definitely smaller this PCB on the 4th go around but I think the economy is getting to everyone.  The discussion rather than presentation format has me excited.  Not to mention, C.C. Chapman and Ron Ploof are heading up the What’s Next discussion.  There are some great discussion leaders over at http://podcampboston.org/schedule-preview

One of the best things about running the conference is the people that come together into the community to make the event spectacular.  There have been numerous offers of wonderful people volunteering to help with anything they can. Thank you each and everyone of you for taking the time to ask.  We have awesome sponsors and some still inbound.

I’m VERY lucky to work with such an awesome team: Christopher Penn, Whitney Hoffman, Chris Brogan, Steve Sherlock, Lance Gomes, Guido Stein, Doug Haslam, Katie Martell, John Eckman, Adam Weiss, & Sara Streeter.

Personally

I’m evolving into what’s next for me personally.  More about that after I survive PCB.  I switched from my iPhone to a new Blackberry Curve on Sprint.  I need to blog about why I switched, but want to put research time into it. I went on vacation and the internet didn’t die. *gasp*

I’m looking forward to getting back to normal after ‘camp is over.

Two Reasons why I’m invisi-pixie…

My friend, C.C. Chapman often has brain dumps on his blog and they seem to help him move forward with his day.  I really wanted to post here this morning and not about any particular thing so I’m going to try his method.

Speaking of C.C., I got my Akoha deck in the mail yesterday and am super excited to have it in my possession.  Have you checked out Akoha?  It’s a type of pay it forward mission, you get a card, you give a card along with what action/gift/thought it has for a mission to a friend/person.  Once they get the card they can go to the website and enter the details, get karma points and then pay it forward to the next person.  What a unique way of connecting strangers.  I love things like this.

Last night was the second Boston Blog Marketing Meetup, lots of new people to the scene, most I’d never met before.  We looked at blogs and made some suggestions to the bloggers about how to get their blogs in better shape and take them into the future.  I can’t wait for next month’s meetup which I’m going to start working on today.

Adam, VibeMetrix CEO wrote an ebook and he is working on another one already.  Every day I get to interact with people and talk to them about what we’re doing and that’s pretty cool.

So what’s coming?  Well the holidays.  I’m traveling to spend the weekend in Columbus with friends before coming back to Boston.  I’m also working on a new blog that is very niche but something anyone can certain learn from.  I’ll let you know when it’s ready and you can check it out if it sounds interesting.

Oh and I just gotta say, this isn’t becoming a political blog.

Brain Dump