"..But Pioneering is Inherently Risky Business.."

Following up from yesterday, I've realized that while it's great to be a trailblazer, innovator, risk taker in the social media world, it also requires a great deal of care and research.

A story from Marketing Magazine inspired this post.

Long story short, Nissan Canada created a contest to promote their new Cube. The 500 finalists were required to show off their creative skills over web pages, Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube to generate buzz. Contestants were rated on their uniqueness, personality, enthusiasm, and in the grand tradition of media democratization, peer voting.

Months later, 50 winners were announced, given keys to their shiny new Cube, and instructed to blog twice a month on CubeCommunity.ca about their experiences with their super awesome, spakin' new Cubes.


Cheap, easy, got the attention of the Canadian national media. What could go wrong?

This:

The losers were upset, and with the Internet at their disposal, they had the power to research holes in the campaign, post their findings to all kinds of platforms, and all but destroy the effectiveness of this grand marketing scheme.

Accusations flew that one of the winners had a relationship with someone on the judging panel, along with accusations that the judging panel was looking for a particular type of person (a "nonconformist") and that those who didn't fit this mold didn't have a chance of winning, despite their work.

As we all know, bad publicity will spread like wildfire. Worse yet, the company took too long to address the situation, making contestants (and potential future Nissan buyers) really upset.

The CEO of the Capital C agency (who conceived the idea for Nissan Canada), Tony Chapman said:

“You’re always going to take a risk when you do anything other than write a cheque and buy some media and have a one-way conversation. If you go out and have a two-way conversation with consumers, you have to be prepared for the fact they are contributors to the conversation and are capable of hijacking it."

What can we learn from this?

1. Be very very concrete in rules and regulations for the judging process. This way, when something does go wrong or accusations fly, they will be able to respond quickly and efficiently to negative publicity.

2. If there are any holes at all in the plan, they WILL be discovered. They should mend them before bloggers and online zealots make them bigger.

Great lessons.