2013-04-23

Epicurious’s Twitter transgression in the wake of the Boston Marathon bombing has been well-documented. Most reports addressed the outrage over the tweets, the initial tepid apology and the subsequent unequivocal mea culpa. Most reports also chided the foodie site for failing to adhere to the best-practice of going silent during a highly sensitive time. Few, however, explored the motivation that led to the tweets in the first place.

Other than its public responses, I haven’t found any detailed statements from Epicurous about who was managing the social media activity at the time, why they didn’t suspend their social marketing or what made them think a cheery tweet about scones was appropriate. The company’s blog has been silent. No press release has been issued. Most people just assume it was some combination of cluelessness and insensitivity.

Without speaking directly with those involved we can’t be sure, but there is a third factor that may well have compelled Epicurious’ social media team to craft and send those tweets:

Pressure.

Headlines on blogs and digital marketing sites—under the bylines of senior, well-known and highly influential individuals—have proclaimed “real-time” the future of digital/social marketing. When U.S. Senator Marco Rubio had his awkward moment during the Republican response to the State of the Union address—stretching off-camera to grab a drink from a bottle of Poland Spring Water—the water company’s silence on its moribund Twitter account led commentators to declare a FAIL.

Mob mentality

Dozens of companies—perhaps more—had teams poised to react nearly instantly to events at the Super Bowl. When the Oreo cookie brand scored a hit with its “you can stil dunk in the dark” graphic, launched into viral success with a tweet and a Facebook status update while the lights at the Super Dome were still out.

Despite the tepid response to virtually every other real-time effort, countless brands chased this latest shiny object by establishing “newsrooms” for the next big cultural event, the Oscars. Companies from US Cellular and Sprint to Stella Artois and a host of others stretched the boundaries of relevance in a mad rush to distribute real-time messages. The surge of Oscar-themed tweets and updates sparked anxiety in even more companies that figured they, too, needed a spot on the bandwagon.

The belief that real-time marketing means pushing clever, asmusing one-way messages connecting the brand to what’s happening right now is likely leading social media marketers to feel obliged to deploy those tweets lest they be singled out as missing the boat. For Epicurious, I doubt anybody heard the news of the bombing and announced, “That’s perfect for us.” Rather, I can imagine the day-to-day pressure to identify cultural memes to leverage resulted in the hasty decision to offer a recipe for scones to honor Boston and New England. The need for speed precludes the opportunity to reflect on the message and its implications.

(The same issue is probably under discussion at CNN in the aftermath of some truly awful, brand-damaging coverage, but that’s a subject for a different discussion.)

The prognosis is not good

Despite the chorus of proclamations that culture-jacking is the future of marketing, I suspect this artificial mandate to flood social channels with real-time ads in hopes of amplification by customers retweeting and sharing won’t last too long. More lapses in judgement like Epicurious’s will lead companies to be more circumspect about advertising in real time.

There are other reasons this form of real-time marketing will be short-lived. Paramount among them is the lack of ROI. Even if brands can amplify these semi-relevant, moderately witty missives (and the anemic number of retweets most of them get indicate that, in most cases, they can’t), these measures are merely outtakes. I have yet to read about mesurable outcomes. Did it raise awareness? Lead a customer to considering the brand? Result in a purchase?

A consumer backlash against these messages is also inevitable if the trend continues. Pepsi’s Shiv Singh has said he doesn’t want to see a world in which every brand is attempt to culture-jack every event and meme. Frank Eliason, Citi’s head of social media, calls it spam. It’s true that you must follow a brand in order to see the initial tweet or update. But I only have to follow somebody who follows the brand to be subject to retweets. If I follow 100 people, half of whom retweet real-time ads, it won’t take long before my Twitter stream becomes polluted with crap I don’t want to see.

Too much of this could catalyze an exodus from Twitter and Facebook that is reportedly already underway among younger users. Did you note that messaging tool WhatsApp—founded in 2009—has surpassed 200 million monthly active users, the same number Twitter has reached, although it took Twitter two years longer to get there. Younger users are adopting WhatsApp, Kik and other players as a preferred alternative to Facebook, and others may follow based on the promise of clutter-free engagement.

Even those who chose to follow a brand may grow chagrined at the number of real-time ads, given that they probably opted in with the expectation of seeing more substantive tweets or updates. It’s important to remember that Oreo—which represents the tipping point for this practice—had already established itself as a purveyor of entertaining graphics by deploying its Daily Twist during the 100 Days of Oreo campaign. A significant portion of the cookie’s 86,000-plus followers connected with the brand because of its real-time efforts. When the dunk-in-the-dark ad made its debut, followers already expected that kind of communication. Followers of other brands—Cars.com, for instance—most signed on in hopes of other kinds of information.

If an opportunity arises for an attention-getting tweet or update based on trending topics, by all means, go for it. But fixating on the need to distribute these ads—viewing it as a requirement with a quota to meet—is a mistake that not only could alienate your audience as it did Epicurious’s, it could kill the golden goose of the social network platforms that have become the heart of so many marketing efforts.

Show more