10 Largest Social Media Marketing Fails Of 2013

10 Largest Social Media Marketing Fails Of 2013

Home Depot

This year some companies soared above all others at FAILING A BIG ONE. Here's the worst social media marketing fails of this year.

10. A strip club in Australia posts a fake time stamped photo of one of their dancers. The time stamp would only make her 15. Oops.

10. Strip club chain Spearmint Rhino's Melbourne team thought they'd be naughty and have Facebook users guess whose baby picture they uploaded. It didn't take long for users to look at the VHS sceenshot's time stamp and realize that the future stripper was now only 14 years old. Spearmint Rhino "liked" its own post.

Facebook via brionyjane.com

9. Kmart wasn't exactly anticipating the backlash they got for staying open for 41 hours on Black Friday. They responded to 100's of tweets with the SAME DARN MESSAGE!

VIA: K-Mart/Twitter

8. The Home Depot may have got a little racist here.

8. Few things hurt a brand more than an accusation of racism. So even though it's impossible to tell if this tweet from Home Depot was indeed racist or simply stupid, the fact that the Twittersphere was up in arms over it made corporate delete the tweet, apologize for two days, and fire the social media agency responsible.

Twitter/The Home Depot

7. This is just wrong on so may levels. The entire campaign of "Got insurance" was just a complete mess.

7. This one is up for debate, but we firmly consider the Colorado nonprofit "Thanks Obamacare!" campaign to be a total fail. Even if some may consider portraying potential customers as morons to be clever marketing, it gave Obamacare critics way too much easy fodder.

Got Insurance?

6. British entertainment retailer HMV lost control of their employees who went crazy on their twitter talking about a mass firing spree. YIKES!

6. British entertainment retailer HMV lost complete control of its social media team, when rogue members used the account to childishly live-tweet a massive firing at the company.

Twitter

5. This airport posted a picture that was supposed to make customers feel safe. The photo was of an older plane crash that killed a little boy.

5. London Luton Airport tapped into the always-hilarious topic of plane crashes for a Facebook post in March. The photo they used came from a 2005 Chicago flight that slid off the runway and killed a 6-year-old boy onboard.

Facebook via nydailynews.com

4. Pepsi's Swedish branch released a set of Facebook ads featuring Cristiano Ronaldo in all sorts of crazy death scenarios. They pulled the ads after 100,000 people joined a hate page.

4. Pepsi's Swedish branch released a set of Facebook ads featuring a voodoo doll of competitor Portugal's megastar Cristiano Ronaldo tied to train tracks, getting his head crushed in, and covered in pins. They were forced to quickly remove them and apologize after a Portuguese anti-Pepsi Facebook group formed and gained over 100K fans in a day.

Pepsi

3. J.P. Morgan tried to do a twitter Q&A with followers. Most of them just trolled them about their massive money fails over the years...

Etc.

2. This cooking site tried to encourage people to bake after the Boston Marathon.

2. Cooking site Epicurious thought they could help people chill out about the Boston Marathon bombing by promoting some recipes on Twitter. Brands have made inappropriate marketing jokes on Twitter before, but Epicurious raised the bar. "Whole-grain cranberry scones!"

Twitter via cdn.business2community.com

1. Amy's Baking Company in Scottsdale, Ariz., was featured in a particularly grueling episode of Gordon Ramsay's "Kitchen Nightmares." They responded to some backlash which just made things worse.

Categories: Grand Rapids News

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