Fail Archives - soulati.com

Like Gini Dietrich at Spin Sucks, I wasn’t going to address the Susan G. Komen national public relations debacle in an election year with Planned Parenthood. After reading her post and the oodles of smart comments from her community, I still wasn’t.

Then, I read Shonali Burke’s extremely amazingly thoughtful and balanced post with more than oodles of examples of trust gone awry and communications strategy, or lack thereof, gone to hell in a hand basket. (I just read in her comments it took her 4 hours to craft that post; when you read it, you’ll understand that she actually gifted us with a case study.)

One of the comments at Gini’s house gave me pause and it goes something to the effect of “isn’t this issue a way for bloggers to build links and get traction from others outside their communities by jumping on the bandwagon?” Gini provided a very smart reply and you can find it yourself when you review the 100+ comments as of this morning.

I’m trying to be sensitive to this comment from someone who doesn’t know that we who write about communications, PR and social marketing MUST cover these topics. That said, and very top of mind for me, what this issue boils squarely down to are three things:

Women’s health
Election-year politics
Poor public relations and social marketing strategy

Each of you reading and following has an opinion that puts us on opposing sides of the aisle. When you read everyone else’s blogs about the serious debacle unfolding (there’s so much more with Bank of America and Penn State, etc.), you can’t help but get beyond pro-life or pro-choice issues with this.

If you’re NOT in communications, I implore you to look at this from business and communications strategy angles. Again, I point you to the blogs mentioned here; these bloggers have done a spectacular job (better than I ever could) of presenting all the facts with balanced judgment to boot. I’m proud of them. Thank you for what you do, Shonali, Gini, John, and the rest of the gang. #ThatIsAll.

The Tip of the Iceberg Only

>>Nancy Schwartz Getting Attention blog via @Shonali

>>Joe Waters Blog via @Shonali

>>Planned Parenthood causes/giving via @Shonali and Beth Kanter and there’s a Pinterest board on this, too!

>>John Haydon who writes and works with non-profits

(Frito-lay/Associated Press/Washington Post)

My first reaction after purchasing Sun Chips in its new, snazzy biodegradable packaging (because I recycle EVERYTHING) upon trying to open it was “dang, that’s noisy!”

Lo, Frito-Lay, owned by PepsiCo Inc. and maker of Sun Chips, has pulled its snazzy biodegradable packaging from shelves (available since January) wasting exorbitant amounts of money in so doing because it failed at consumer test marketing (IMHO).

I’m amazed companies the likes of Pampers with its Dry-Max debacle I wrote about here and now Sun Chips have launched products (after cycling through the usual market research, focus groups, product development et al I assume) only to pull them or engage in defensive posturing due to consumer outcry AFTER the fact.

How could Sun Chips not know that bag was noisy? Have you ever heard it?

Tumbling sales and consumer-created videos on social media sites contributed to the decision by these corporate giants to return five of the six flavors back to non-compostable packaging. So much for saving the environment from potato chip bags, eh?

Here’s the fail – because social media is at the fingertips of all consumers and corporations if they regard it as more than a passing fad, all Sun Chips would’ve had to do was the following:

During market research, it would’ve been simple and inexpensive to produce and launch a YouTube video asking for a nation-wide vote about which bag consumers prefer – the current (non-noisy) bag or the new, biodegradable (noisy) bag. I can assure you, Frito-Lay, that video would’ve garnered tremendous word-of-mouth attention and off we go to the races.
On your lame attempt at a Facebook page where one consumer calls the new Sun Chips bags “great idea, freakishly loud,” you could’ve asked for votes on which bag is preferred and then point to the YouTube video to secure hits there, too.
On Twitter (are you @Fritolay or @Frito-Lay?) with your confusing identity with the same avatar where one of you currently apologizes for the noisy bag and asks for another chance, you could’ve launched a campaign to engage the tier-one social media pros to ask for a Twitter strategy (because obviously your in-house public relations department or unsavvy agency did not help you in this regard).

Well, hindsight is always 20-20, right? And, no one asked me, so I’ll just keep my 26-years-in-public-relations-counsel to myself.

Soulati-'TUDE!