Chapstick's Social Media Death Spiral

So far on our blog we've mostly spent time discussing integrated marketing success stories and praised social media creativity. Well this post is going to be a story of a company blunder.

Here's the condensed version of how a relatively quiet brand fell into a social media death spiral by incorrectly using social media.

Chapstick created a Facebook page featuring ads and other information as well as a place for customers to place feedback. Their most recent post on their Facebook page was an ad with a picture of a woman's behind while she's reaching over a couch looking for her Chapstick.

The ad upset some people and they tried to post their opinions on Facebook. Chapstick deleted the posts of the unhappy viewers, which only upset them more. This led to more and more negative comments and Chapstick trying to delete them all. It got to the point where Chapstick couldn't keep up, and the comments were pretty harsh. The consensus of the posts were not complaints about the picture, but posters opinions on how Chapstick was going against their tagline for their Facebook page "Be Heard". Instead of removing the picture and moving on, Chapstick just adds fuel to the fire with their next move. They do remove the picture, but with a back-handed apology to their Facebook followers.

"We see that not everyone likes our new ad, and please know that we certainly didn't mean to offend anyone!" the post says. "Our fans and their voices are at the heart of our new advertising campaign, but we know we don't always get it right. We've removed the image and will share a newer ad with our fans soon!" The second part of the ad is what was the final self inflicted wound for themselves. "We apologize that fans have felt like their posts are being deleted and while we never intend to pull anyone's comments off our wall, we do comply with Facebook guidelines and remove posts that use foul language, have repetitive messaging, those that are considered spam-like (multiple posts from a person within a short period of time) and are menacing to fans and employees."

This half-hearted apology from Chapstick really did nothing because they blamed the writers of the posts for the reason they needed to be deleted. Chapstick said that the foul-language used was the reason for the removal of the posts. Chapstick completely ignores the fact that is was their fault with deleting the posts and angering the customers in the first place.

What Chapstick has done here is made their bed, and are now seeing that they will have to lay in it, and its not very comfy or warm. They have completely failed to use one of the most effective marketing tools in Facebook. They had a campaign for fans to "be heard" and they silenced them. What did they do? They deleted fans post thinking the criticism would go away only to see it came harder and faster than they could keep up with. Showing exactly how not to handle a situation that arises with upset fans.

Chapstick whould have simply removed the ad as soon as they saw that it upset some people. If they weren't comfortable with that they should have listened to people's comments taken them into consideration and simply explained why they released this ad campaign, and that they were working towards making a different less risque advertisement.

This is a sad story considering the fact that Chapstick is not a big player in the advertising field, and they just totally blew a huge opportunity they had. Chapstick's inexperience may have shown through with this incident, and I look for them to make a comeback here to try and save some face within the social media field..