A Chronology of Brands that Got Punk’d by Social Media « Web Str. Update: Aug 2011, we’ve conducted a research project to analyze these social media crises, read the full report to find out what went wrong and how to prevent it. A list of companies that were blind-sided by the internet, they didn’t understand the impacts of the power shift to the participants, or how fast information would spread, or were just plain ignorant. Criteria of “Punk’d” includes a situation where the story would have not been told if social media was not available, or if social media enhanced the situation. Read my exclusive interview with Greenpeace on Forbes. This doesn’t include fake blogs, companies who deliberately tried to cheat the system get their own honorable mention. Although this punk’d list is the one to stay off, the one you want to get on is the Groundswell awards. Update: I’ve added severity status for some of these Punk’d using the Categorization of Brand Backlash Storms)
Management - Twitter do’s and don’ts for brands. Brands and Twitter / we are social. So after being on the front page on Marketing the week before last, this week we’ve hit the pages of Campaign, with our inclusion in a feature article about, you guessed it, Twitter: Three years into its existence, the recent media frenzy around celebrity Twitterers, including Stephen Fry and Jonathan Ross, and Barack Obama’s successful use of the medium in the run-up to the US election, has seen the popularity of the “microblogging” site increase 27-fold in 12 months.Advertisers could learn a lot from celebrity Twitterers using the site to shape their personal branding, creating a close, one-on-one relationship with their fans without constantly filtering their thoughts through a PR sieve.Robin Grant, the managing director of the social media agency We Are Social, which advises Fry on his use of Twitter, explains: “The advice we gave to Stephen centred on being himself and having genuine conversations with people.
It’s the same for brands. Why is it cleverer David? 40 of the Best Twitter Brands and the People Behind Them. We all know brands are using Twitter — whether or not you want them around. Some of them don't quite get the medium and just tweet self-serving links or marketing speak, but you won't find any of those brands here. We've handpicked 40 of the best brands experimenting with the micro-blogging platform, and asked them a few short questions about how they're using Twitter.
If some of their responses seem short, well that's because they are. I asked each brand correspondent to answer our queries in 140 characters or less. Most of them got the point, a few rambled on a bit too long, and only asked me if "u" was acceptable in lieu of "you. " All in all, we've found some amazing people, doing some pretty powerful things at big companies, and all via Twitter.
Smart brands use Twitter in meaningful ways, and most of them use their brand name as a way to make sure customers can find and recognize them. Cars Who cares what a car company has to say in 140 characters or less, right? Chevrolet Ford Honda.