Where Are They Now? Social Media Horror Stories

Just How Scary is Social Media? (Photo Courtesy of Gviciano/Flickr)

Do you ever wonder “what ever happened to….?” Maybe you’re wondering about what happened to Jennifer from Family Ties, your date to the junior prom or whatever happened to those companies where social media went horribly awry.

So let’s review. Jennifer/Tina Yothers did Celebrity Fit Boot Camp in 2008, your date to the junior prom is out of rehab and the social media companies, well, let’s check in:

Whatever happened to Kryptonite Locks?

Rewind to 2004 when you were still on MySpace. Kryptonite U bike locks were considered one of the most secure locks around. Chris Brennan proved otherwise and opened these locks by using a simple ballpoint pen. He posted this fact to Bike Forums and within a couple days it was all over blogs and mainstream news. We social media people ate out on this story for months using it as an example of what happens when you don’t listen to social media. But they were listening. My former co-worker Dave Taylor interviewed Donna Tocci, public relations manager for Kryptonite, about the myths that populated about Kryptonite and the blogosphere.

Where Are They Now?: The company, Kryptonite Locks, is still alive and kicking! From Dave’s earlier interview with Kryptonite, “We’ve also had a brand study done. Only the preliminary results are back, but they show that our brand reputation wasn’t as damaged as the blogosphere would have you believe.” They launched a blog in 2007 but took it down in November 2009 for renovation. That’s quite the renovation! When you Google “Kryptonite Locks” six years later, the Wired story is still in the top results on Google. In fact, videos of people breaking all types of locks populate their front page, yet they don’t have any video channels of their own. Yet, they most be doing something right from an SEO perspective, because they’re in top results for safe bike locks.

Whatever happened to Motrin Moms?

The fall of 2008 when NASDAQ was lurching, Motrin launched an ad on how moms who wear baby slings must be in pain and Motrin felt that pain. Twitter streams were inundated with outraged Moms who felt the ads were demeaning and insulting. The hashtag #motrinmoms became the nightmare of corporate PR. Jeremiah Owyang (@jowyang) has an excellent overview on his blog on exactly how big the groundswell for Motrin Moms became. This example was frequently cited as an example of how powerful and influential mom bloggers had become. Motrin ended up apologizing and took down the website.

Where Are They Now? Motrin Moms still comes up as a frequently searched term under “Motrin” but in terms of results, only the actual commercial shows up on the front page. It’s hard to look at the financial effects of a product under such a huge corporate umbrella such as Johnson & Johnson. But for the record, J&J didn’t see a significant stock price drop and in fact, their stock price rose in Dec. 2008. And according to IdeaLaunch, “Johnson & Johnson’s end-of-year 2008 OTC (over-the-counter) sales were up by 13% from the previous year.”

Motrin currently has a bigger problem in that in 2009 they disguised what ultimately should have been a pill recall.

Whatever Happened to Skittles Website Snafu?

Skittles launched a website with a twist in the spring of 2009 – the corporate site listed out all unfiltered social media mentions they received as their sole web presence. Unfortunately, rather than letting their customers and fans speak for them, the site was flooded with inappropriate and unfortunate messages. Critics hailed it as Skittles listing the conversation rather than joining the conversation, and Skittles was labeled as another company doing it wrong.

Where are they now? No one buys Skittles anymore. Ok, not even close. Skittles has tweaked the site so you can still provide social media content for Skittles. But you have to upload it, and Skittles chooses whether or not they’ll showcase your content. What’s more interesting is that they have a Facebook page with more than 5 million fans. They’ll receive up to 500 comments on their irreverent status updates, but still don’t “join the conversation.” They also recently launched a new social media program called “Mob the Rainbow“. No remnants of last year’s snafu show on the homepage after you Google “Skittles“.

Whatever Happened to Nestle’s Boycott?

In the fourth grade, my Mom stopped letting me purchase Crunch bars because she felt Nestle was causing women in third-world countries to become addicted to formula milk. I didn’t understand why my Mom wouldn’t let me enjoy the crispy goodness, but 18 years later I’ve never forgotten boycotting Nestle. The boycott is still ongoing today, and when Nestle invited mom bloggers to visit their headquarters in October 2009 while using the hashtag – #Nestlefamily – many jumped in on the hashtag with harsh criticisms of Nestle and what has now become a 30-year boycott. One Mom who did attend, provided an excellent wrapup with both sides of the story.

Where Are They Now? No doubt that social media raised new awareness for this ongoing boycott among a key demographic. But did awareness result in more boycotting? The stock price actually rose after the boycott (as most stocks did during this time period), and according to Nestle’s annual report, “The Food and Beverages business had organic growth of 3.9 percent.”  The boycott doesn’t show on its top results page even if it does warrant its own Wikipedia page.

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Overall, I was disappointed with the information out there on the long-term effects of social media horror stories. If we’re going to discuss how social media drives bottom-line results than we need to better understand the adverse long-term effects of these groundswells from a financial, reputation and SEO standpoint. When using the aforementioned examples as case studies, we should be clear that we don’t know or understand the long-term effects.