Author: Jenn Lowther, Internet Marketing Specialist, Memelabs

Originally posted at: http://www.memelabs.com/about/5-worst-executed-viral-marketing-campaigns.html

5 Worst Executed Viral Marketing Campaigns

5. Starbucks – Free Coffee Promotion

In August 2006, Starbucks sent an email coupon for a free iced coffee to their employees in the Southeast United States and asked them to forward it to their friends and family. Now this was not intended to be a viral marketing campaign, but that’s what it became when they chose to use the internet as their marketing medium. Within hours, the coupon had spread across the internet and reached a much larger audience than Starbucks had originally intended (I received one that day and I live in Canada and was quite looking forward to my tasty free iced coffee).

The problem arose when Starbucks decided that they were not going to honour the coupons. Instead of taking the opportunity to build good will with their client base and introduce new consumers to their product, they issued the following response:

An email offering a free Starbucks iced coffee was distributed to a limited group of Starbucks partners (employees) in the Southeast United States on Wednesday, August 23, 2006 with instructions to forward to their group of friends and family. Unfortunately, it has been redistributed beyond the original intent and modified beyond Starbucks control. Effective immediately, this offer will no longer be valid at any Starbucks locations.

We apologize for any confusion and inconvenience as a result of this offer.
In response to this marketing blunder, a Starbucks competitor, Caribou Coffee announced that they would honour the now defunct coupons – a much better response than the one put forth by Starbucks. I have no doubt that loyal Starbucks customers, as I am one, will forgive and forget, but I have to wonder how many occasional and new customers they lost due to this customer relation disaster.

4. Malibu Banana Boat – Youtube Video Contest

This campaign makes the list not because the campaign itself was bad; in fact it got a lot of very good entries, received very good website traffic, and in general created a really good level of interest in the campaign. The campaign asked for people to create a video advertisement for the new product launch with a $25,000 prize or a banana grove in a tropical locale for the winning entry (http://www.youtube.com/MalibuBanana).

The problem occurred when the company decided the winner of the video contest. The company said that it would take into consideration the votes that the videos received on YouTube along in conjunction a panel of judges. When the winner was announced however, the company did not publicly give a list of finalists. This caused many of the contestants to claim that the contest was rigged – one contestant went so far as to create a conspiracy video about the contest. This lack of judging transparency took a really good video campaign and mired it in controversy.

3. Resident Evil – T- Virus

Prior to the release of the new Resident Evil video game, CE Europe launched an advertising campaign to pique people’s interest in its upcoming release. Text messages were sent to people’s cell phones with a cryptic message that referred to a plot component of the video game. These messages were being sent from the campaign website designed to promote the game, in which players defend themselves against zombies by shooting their heads off with a shotgun. The website allowed for the unsolicited text messages to be sent to peoples cell phones claiming that their phone was infected - done without the permission of the phone’s owner. A typical text message is below:

Outbreak: I’m infecting you with t-virus, my code is ******. Forward this to 60022 to get your own code and chance to win prizes. More at t-virus.co.uk

What better way to promote your new game launch than freaking out your target demographic by making them think that their cell phone has been infected with a virus. Since this was not an opt-in advertising campaign, the recipients of the text messages had no way of knowing that this was an advertising ploy for a video game.

2. Chevy Apprentice– Create and Ad

It must have seemed like a good idea at the time, when Chevy and The Apprentice TV show teamed up to promote the new Chevy Tahoe. They set it up so that visitors to the website could create their own advertisement for the Chevy Tahoe. The campaign website allowed users to take stock footage and insert their own captions.

The concept as a whole is not bad, the problem occurred when people uploaded the ads; it went live without anyone reviewing them. Well you can just imagine what came next…

The best part was the brilliant marketing team at Chevy left the less that complimentary videos up on the site for everyone to see.

1. Sony’s – All I want for Christmas is a PSP

And the title of worst viral campaign goes to Sony’s – All I want for Christmas is a PSP. I don’t even know where to begin on where this campaign went so terribly, terribly wrong. Sony started what could have been an incredibly effective marketing campaign leading into the busy Christmas season; instead they ended up alienating their target market and making themselves look like a joke and treated their consumer like idiots.

First, they set up a fake website pretending to be PSP fanboy’s, produced a video with a cringe-inducing rap and follow this up with fake comments praising their campaign. The website has since been pulled down, but below is the website copy and the video that Sony posted to YouTube:

here’s the deal::: i (charlie) have a psp. my friend jeremy does not. but he wants one this year for xmas.

so we started clowning with sum not-so-subtle hints to j’s parents that a psp would be teh perfect gift. we created this site to spread the luv to those like j who want a psp!

consider us your own personal psp hype machine, here to help you wage a holiday assault on ur parents, girl,

granny, boss — whoever — so they know what you really want.

we’ll let you know how it works for us. pls return the favor.

more to come,
c&j.

I don’t know about you, but I think I just threw up a bit in my mouth. This campaign is just over the top. Here is the video that some gamers put together in response to the failed campaign.

Once they had been busted, Sony followed up with an apology for the marketing stunt that went oh so wrong. The apology isn’t any better than the actual campaign. To me this wreaks the same way that the campaign that started it all did - insincere, but don’t take my word for it, here is a copy of the apology that Sony issued.

Busted. Nailed. Snagged. As many of you have figured out (maybe our speech was a little too funky fresh???), Peter isn’t a real hip-hop maven and this site was actually developed by Sony. Guess we were trying to be just a little too clever. From this point forward, we will just stick to making cool products, and use this site to give you nothing but the facts on the PSP.

Did they not learn their lesson the first time around? A simple contrite apology would have gone much further than the one the company issued. Personally, if I’d been busted for being a poser and poorly imitating youth pop culture; I would avoid using phrases like “Busted. Nailed. Snagged.” and “too funky fresh”.