Advice for Clueless Brands on Social Media


Dear Bob & Doug:

I’m the CEO of a youth fashion chain aimed at elite teens who think our clothes are the cost of admission to the non-loser tables in the cafeteria. Obviously, we don’t want a bunch of tubby dorkwads in our clothes, because their inferiority rubs off on the brand. I’ve been saying this for years, but now I mention something about us not selling to fat chicks, because, duh, and suddenly I’m the Mr. Meanie. Dude, what happened?

—Mystified in the Mall

Dear Mystified:

What happened was the Relationship Era. Now everybody knows how bad your values are, what kind of messages you are sending children and generally what a jerk you are. Your marketing strategy is bullying. Enjoy the conversation, Dude. It’ll be about you.

Dear Bob & Doug:

Remember the Super Bowl when the lights went out and Oreo sent out a tweet about dunking “in the dark?” They got nothing but praise for their real-time resourcefulness. Well, we sell food, too, and when those women were rescued in Cleveland, their rescuer said he was eating one of our famous burgers when he noticed one of the victims. So naturally, we tweeted to the hero, “We’ll be in touch.” But all we got was criticism. What did we do wrong?

—McOnlytryingtobenice in McOakbrook

Dear McOnlytryingtobenice:

Three women were imprisoned in chains and sexually abused for 10 years. This is not about you. Shut up.

Dear Bob & Doug:

We are a chain of 1,000 department stores going through a rough patch. Our CEO was just fired. Our first quarter sales came in down 16% from a bad year a year ago. We’re about to lose Martha Stewart to Macy’s. We’ve had to mortgage our headquarters. We are losing market share to Amazon, Target and Walmart. And now we’re being singed for failing to refund a young couple $1,530 for a damaged wedding ring. I mean, we did eventually, after some local TV news reporters got into the act, but why should we be responsible for customers’ carelessness?

—Plagued in Plano

Dear Plagued:

You know the story about Nordstrom and the tire? A lady asked for a refund and was given one, even though Nordstrom doesn’t even sell tires? Well, it’s not exactly true, but it retains its mythic status because it illustrates how customer service (and authority conferred on front-line staff) has immense word-of-mouth value beyond the cost of a given transaction. Not to make your month any worse, but that dynamic works in reverse, too.

Dear Bob & Doug:

Oops. We’re an Australian cable system and we were promoting a series on one of our channels as part of our cheekily named “Festival of WTF!” Long story short, we did a billboard in Sydney featuring a man having sex with a pig from behind. It was meant to be humorous, but we recognized the problem when people complained. We imagined ourselves in the place of people with small kids, and we imagined ourselves in the place of the Australian Christian Lobby and offered an immediate apology. But people are still squealing. What should we do?

—Nervous in New South Wales

Dear Nervous:

In terms of your career, it’s probably more realistic to imagine yourself in the place of the pig.

Image via iStockphoto, knape

Bob Garfield


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