One of the best Aldi fails
When it comes to branding and consumer engagement, social media has opened the floodgates like nothing else we’ve seen. There are several benefits to interacting with your customers social media such as:
- Instilling a sense of loyalty
- Increasing awareness of the brand
- Having direct access to consumers and what they want
- Rewarding customers through social media campaigns
- Educating customers on new products, services and sales
However, there are some down sides of social media when it comes to launching social media campaigns and the repercussions when they do go badly. There are a few simple things to consider when it comes to ‘what-to-do’ with social media campaigns and it comes down to three rules:
- Do not create a social media campaign where you are inadvertently encouraging criticism
- Be prepared to fulfill the promise of the social media campaign
- Have someone constantly monitoring the campaign and feedback on the social media pages
An example of an ultimate fail when it comes to social media campaigns is Aldi’s recent campaign encouraging people to fill in the blanks: ‘I became an Aldi lover when I tasted ________ for the first time’ and share it with their friends through tagging @ALDIAustralia.
As most reasonable people would assume, the content that was willingly offered throughout social media was on the wrong end of the Appropriate Scale. Most contributors jumped on board with suggestions too offensive to use for any kind of PR. Some of the more tamer suggestions included “your mum”, “horse” and “butts.”
When the barrage of unhelpful and not-so-family-friendly tweets started to build up, Aldi removed the invitation from social media and very quietly slunk back into the background. This case study goes to show that even big budget companies can get it wrong but reassuringly, if done correctly, small companies can get it so right.
