As we have oft banged on about mentioned occasionally, one of the joys of social media is that it let’s you hear what’s actually being said, and as we warn clients, what is being said is not always good. This is because our actions and interactions on the interwebz tends to accurately reflect real life, and unfortunately real life is not the place of pink fluffy warmth and kindness that we like to pretend it is. On a personal level, one of the other joys of social media is that it allows us to create rather effective filters so that we can easily avoid the iccky stuff that might put us off our cornflakes. Of course, when this self-created cocoon does occasionally get burst it enhances the shock value.

It’s not surprising that social media darling, Twitter, has a dark underbelly. We know about the spammers, who hasn’t been followed by a gaggle of horny Brittany’s at some point, but they are easy to block and ignore, making sure our filters stay intact. But it seems that Mike Butcher, over at TechCrunch UK has discovered an even seedier side, when he was tipped off about a user called Dinner_Guest, who appears to be blogging about the kidnap and subsequent killing of someone. Mike suggests that it could be a stunt, but also says:

Now, clearly this could all be part of some sick fantasy. The trouble is, should we take that chance, or do the Police in Brighton need to know that they have a potential serial killer on their hands who has taken to Twittering his killing spree?

It’s clearly not possible to know either way, until real-world events start to match up with Dinner Guest’s Tweets.

I hope that Mike did actually call the cops before posting, even though I do believe that it is a stunt. The account is only eight days old but has a professional background and its very second tweet was from Twitterlator. Most unusual behaviour for a n00b, unless of course this is not their first account, though why would they then ask how to follow people later on, unless of course they are pretending to be a n00b?Plus, what kind of serial killer realises that no matter who says it that 80 followers does not a viral make. In short, the whole thing smells worse than my rugby captains lucky socks by season end and I have a sneaky suspicion that all will be revealed by Saturday.

Stunt or not, it does raise questions about how we should react to incidents like this, and how we should then deal with the perpetrator if it does turn out to be a stunt. Mike raises a good point about how once the mainstream media finds out about this there will no doubts be calls for Twitter to be policed, which to me is equally as unpalatable as some of the stuff that appears online. It would also be practically impossible plus, if there is a serial killer operating in Brighton, wouldn’t it be handy if he kept tweeting about it so that he could be tracked down via his email and IP address? Must be far more effective than tracing anonymous notes and phone calls.

The Interwebz, and more specifically the world wide web, have both been around for quite some time now. Blogging has entered the difficult tweenager stage and even Twitter is getting past the terrible two’s tantrum throwing stage. There’s also now officially a ratio of one-to-one for every social media guru/maven/expert/sith lord to every non-social meda n00b. Pretty much all we seem to do is talk about blogging/micro-blogging/citizen journalist, how to do it well, it’s importance and impact. The horror stories of what happens when you cock up can circulate for years (seriously if I attend one more social media seminar that references either Dell Hell or the Kryptonite, I may well go postal), so it’s stunning that some companies don’t seem to realise that people use the web to talk about them and that anything they may do in a slight untoward manner may well get picked up on. It’s also surprising that marketeers still don’t seem to understand human nature and that it’s not just bloggers who don’t check their facts.

A colleague flagged an interesting tale of woe from the Inquirer about a blog competition ran by Asus that had attracted complaints due to a late in the day change to how the winner would be picked, the intro calmly stated that:

IRATE BLOGGERS are up in arms at Asus after a blogging competition at electricpig.com turned sour.

Which seemed like an excellent opportunity for me to wax lyrical about how companies need to be wary of trying to play things their own way and shouldn’t expect to get away without at least a minor blogstorm. Indeed, the whole point of the post was initially intended to be something along the lines of ‘For god’s sake people, when will you realise that the web is nothing that a huge rumour mill and stop adding grist by underestimating this. This now forms lesson one for this post, because as I researched into the story it became apparent that Asus had little option but to change the selection process.

From what I can gather, as I can’t find the original competition post, readers of Electricpig were invited to pitch to become an Asus reviewer for a month, they could pick which product they wanted and had to produce three articles per week for the duration of the competition. Six bloggers would be chosen and the winner would be decided on by a reader vote for the best one, they would then be able to keep the product they reviewed. One lucky commentator would also be given an Eee PC, so far so funky. Posts were written, the competition closed and the votes piled in, and the winner by a fair stretch was Gavyn Britton, except there was then some discussion as to whether he had gamed the system by asking for votes on other forums. Second lesson, people will always try to game the system and sometimes being overly-cynical is actually a good thing.

It was decided to then ask the six bloggers involved to vote for their favourite reviewer, which meant Emma Hill, who’d only gained 1% of the popular vote, won. Unfortunately, the post about her winning rather glossed over the reason why the selection process had changed:

The final twist to the campaign came when we asked the six bloggers to turn on each other who they felt gave the best blogging experience. We’re happy to announce that Emma Hill, who affectionately called the ASUS Eee Top 1602 ‘ET’ and even took some cracking photos of ET in action to prove the point!

Which then meant that the Electricpig readers felt cheated and disenfranchised, leading them to complain to The Inquirer, herein lies the third lesson. The web is about transparency, it’s difficult for people to create conspiracy theories if there is nothing left for them to doubt and question, so if you are doing stuff online as a brand be open about, explain why things are the way they are and be open to discussion as to your reasons. In this case, if the final post announcing the winner had been clearer about why the selection process had changed. Another possibility would have been to ask the readers themselves how they felt the situation should be resolved. Perhaps then people wouldn’t have complained to the Inq, which in turn would not have written a misleading article blaming Asus for arbitrarily changing the rules, which in turn leads to the forth and final lesson for this post, don’t take anything you read at face value.

“It’s the difference between launching with many millions of dollars versus millions of fans.”

Those are the words of Chris Bruzzo, Starbucks VP of Brand, Content & Online, to describe the chain’s new marketing strategy. It’s an integrated campaign which nicely reflects our very own ‘integration triangle’. It will use traditional advertising to encourage online engagement and fuel real world competitions for real world prizes.

McCafé – a $100m launch campaign

In the corner of Starbucks’ eye, it can see McDonalds has launched a new range of coffee products and reportedly backing it up with $100m worth of advertising on television, print, radio, and billboard ads. While Starbucks has little trouble differentiating its products from McCafé on grounds (no pun intended) of quality, McDonalds’ aggressive advertising means the coffee giants needs to be wary.

McCafé was launched in Australia in 1993, reaching Chicago, Illinois, eight years later. McDonalds expects to have “the majority of its 14,000 stores converted by mid-2009″ (Wikipedia).

McDonalds targeted Starbucks last year with its Unsnobbycoffee website, which argued that McCafé makes it simple to order the coffee you want without confusing names, sizes and general coffee snobbery. I’m not sure one could describe Starbucks as “snobby”, but still…

Fans v dollars

While McDonalds tools up with dollar bills, Starbucks is set to counter with a more integrated approach. It has 1.5 million Facebook fans and over 180,000 Twitter followers, and BBDO North America, the agency behind the approach, is aiming to harness and augment these in order to deliver a successful campaign.

The campaign will be driven by traditional print advertising (NYTimes.com):

“Starbucks’s text-heavy ads have bold headlines written on a background that looks like a burlap coffee sack, meant to evoke roasted coffee.”

To tie this into its social media presence, the ads in six major US cities will become the centre of attention in a series of online contests. Twitter users will be encouraged to spot the billboards and post a picture to Twitter.

Pros and cons

As Meghan Keane points out in the Econsultancy post which I’ll link to here for the third time, the issue with marketing through social media fans is that their fans and followers probably don’t really care about their coffee habits. It hardly equates to spam, but it’s possible that low-level alienation occurs.

Still, the campaign sounds nicely integrated. The print ads are suitably mainstream to stand alone as an ad campaign, but the social media schemes tie in rather well.

And bringing real world competition online (the billboard hunt) completes the Starbucks campaign’s integration. It’ll be interesting to see if the hordes of online Starbucks fans can counter McCafé’s huge budget. The Starbucks campaign is, in its own right, the company’s biggest marketing activity to date. The results will make interesting reading.