Social Cache.
A Nemo blog. Dealing with uncommon cents.

I love nothing better on Monday morning than reading Adrants – coffee –> Adrants –> laugh at the fails…no one does it better. Today they cheered me up with their usual sarcastic takedown of a company starting a blog and getting it wrong. I can’t believe that it is almost 2009 and companies are still struggling with the simple idea of how to communicate intelligently with their customers via a two-way communication. It’s not difficult guys… Seriously, some of the quips in this Adrants rap on Becks Beer, Becks Launches a Blog. Gets Everything Wrong, should make me cry not laugh. Check it – some extracts:

Beck’s has launched a blog, Different by Choice. Yawn, right? But the way they’ve announced it and the way it’s formatted is so annoying, it can’t be left alone.

In an email beginning with “Hello Important Marketing Blog People,” Beck’s blogger Darius asks, “has anyone told you recently how hot you are?” and then goes on to explain how he “destroyed” 850 other potential bloggers vying for the job “‘cos that is the way I roll.” Ugh. Cue the Agency.com Subway video.

And then with an ego akin to Sean John believing anyone remotely takes him seriously, Darius prattles on, “This is a novel and let’s face it a brave choice by Beck’s to give me a platform to extol my views and ideals on their global website whilst writing on all that I deem to be ‘Different by Choice.’ Beck’s legal department are bracing themselves for the impending months.”

Ooo. Blogger VS. Lawyer! Hey Darius, that one was played out in 2002.

And if all this weren’t enough to make you want to gag yourself with I AM KING, the entire blog site is in Flash. Yes, a blog in Flash, the worst platform to create anything which requires even the tiniest bit of navigation.

OMG!

In yet another social media debacle, the VP of Marketing at McNeil Consumer Healthcare, the folks who bring us Motrin, has posted an apology on the company’s web site. After offending millions of moms who carry their babies in those wrap around shawls, McNeil was flayed by a firestorm of criticism from the mom bloggers of the world who Twittered McNeil into submission. McNeil made a cardinal error – they failed to research the very market, new moms, that they were trying to reach and then doubled down and took the weekend off without monitoring the firestorm that was merely smoldering before it erupted. Result – egg on the face and a no doubt expensive ad campaign in the trash can….. Here’s the offending ad –