Social Media Promotes Good Causes, Though Commonly Backfires on Bad Actors

Here’s a video that reminds me of a few key points in the use of social media and the quest to make a certain piece of content go viral.  First, it needs to be so appealing that it achieves “critical mass,” in the same sense as a nuclear reaction, i.e., one viewer spawns more than one viewer as a result.  There is no formula for this, in the same way that there is no blueprint to coming up with a hit song, a best-selling book, or a breakthrough in science.  One of my heroes, Linus Pauling (pictured), won a Nobel prize in chemistry and then eight years later was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for his work in opposing the development of weapons of mass destruction.  He’s known for saying: “The way to have good ideas is to have lots of ideas.

Second, it must not contain the germ of its own implosion upon itself.  Some of these efforts backfire on their creators in a big way, especially when the sponsor could be seen as using the piece to create positive PR that it, in fact, does not deserve.   Trust me, as clever as the corporation’s marketing team or ad agency might be, the online world is far more ingenious, and totally unmerciful.

As I wrote here, corporations that play with fire in this regard often wish they hadn’t, and wind up with “bashtags” (as opposed to hashtags).  When McDonalds thought it could generate good PR by taking advantage of the vast audiences on Twitter and FaceBook and asked people to share their “first McDonalds experiences,” I’m sure they thought the campaign would elicit stories of mommies bringing their little ones for burgers and French fries after their first little league games. Instead, the comments, which went mega-viral, were things like: “I remember hearing about the rat feces in BigMacs,” or “I remember learning that McDonalds is the biggest single source of deforestation on the planet.”

The campaign “Chevron Does” met a similar fate.  The intention of the campaign, obviously, was to highlight Chevron’s many claims to humanitarian activities, e.g., “Who invests in renewables?  Chevron does.”  Within minutes, however, there were swarms of suggestions like this: “Who ruins the Ecuadorian rainforest?” and “Who profits at the expense of our health?”

It’s a good bet that this Purina commercial will experience smooth sailing.  I just passed it along willingly, as you might as well.