Social media is a fairly new medium, so it’s no surprise that people gaffe from time to time when they try to execute it right. Of course, there’s a varying degree of severity between “Whoops, I posted the wrong link!” to “Oh my, I’ve done something so bad that I need to dig a hole and crawl in.” You might expect the latter from individuals or smaller companies, but when a big company slips on that level, it comes as a bit of a shock. And that is just what happened yesterday when the enormously high profile video game publisher Square Enix tried to use a Facebook game to promote their newest title in the Hitman game series.
Since the game itself depicts the adventures of an assassin, the Facebook game in question was a social device that allowed you to “put a hit” on friends. That’s already a little weird, but with the right comedic twist, I can see the potential for it. However, the faux pas came in the form of a drop down box that allowed you to specify the reason for the hit. The list included PC-unfriendly motivations such as “her muffin top” and “her bad hair,” but took the cake with “her small tits,” which is not only inappropriate language but sexist as hell to boot. Men weren’t left out of the insult war either, as “tiny penis” was also an option.
As expected, social media exploded over the app — in exactly the opposite way that Square intended. The app was pulled within hours, apologizing and they issued a statement saying they did not mean to offend their audience. The campaign was created by Emmy-award winning ad agency Ralph, who apparently don’t that cruelly making fun of people before shooting them in the face with a sniper rifle is much of an objection given the game’s “mature” audience.
Epic fail doesn’t even begin to describe the debacle here. While the newness of social media has made it a necessity for businesses to figure out how to connect with their consumers, it also means a lot of wandering into the creative unknown — which can yield stellar results or a landmine of bad PR. I keep trying to wrap my brain around how anyone greenlighted this thing, and no matter what angle I come at it from, I still can’t get a handle on it. Kudos to Square-Enix for reacting with lightning speed, removing the app less than an hour after it appeared, but how did it even get that far in the first place?
If you are trying to think of ways to use Facebook to engage your client that are cool but not over the top, it’s best to have a checklist handy. “No racial, ethical, or sexist slurs” is probably a great place to start, followed by “know your target audience.” In this case, sadly, the target audience MAY have found this app funny, as the 2011 demographicfor gaming shows that 53% of the people playing games are between the ages of 18-54. In other words, lots of teenagers that might not think twice about picking on a classmate for physical flaws. Sexism in gaming has recently drawn huge amounts of criticism over the rampant and violent misogyny that the medium and its consumers have tacitly encouraged for years. The fact that the company was willing to put their seal of approval on such a blatant example of juvenile asshattery shows that they’re tragically out of touch with the contemporary climate — not to mention ignorant of the disastrous PR effects on a brand that wading into these issues can provoke.
What do you think about Square Enix’s slipup? Can you think of any other social media disasters that have caused you to facepalm at the speed of light?
(Image via Kotaku.)
The weekend after Thanksgiving was one of the most aggressive marketing blitzes in recent memory. News reports had three shopping holidays to choose from: the venerable Black Friday, which started around 1961 but didn’t gain the influence it now has until as late as 2005; Small Business Saturday, a American Express-backed venture that took advantage of a Twitter hashtag in 2010 supporting local brick-and-mortars; and Cyber Monday, coined by the National Retail Federation in 2005. These three days have only been increasing in search volume and clout, and are now at the forefront of the holiday business season.
My immediate thought when looking at this data was that social media was being discounted, as it often is an intermediary step between product research and buying that product. Especially during sales, users will shop around, compare products, and come to the same retailer through a variety of advertising channels. Much like paid search and organic social media posts, the buying cycle can be particularly long, especially when all of your competitors are also vying for your customers.
Just like all of you, I spend a sizeable portion of my day with Facebook open in one of the many tabs of my Google Chrome browser. I do it for work; other typical explanations include social media addiction, boredom, or a bad case of the Mondays. Either way, I’m confident that a great majority of people that spent any time on social media on Monday caught a great deal of images, comments, posts, updates, and tweets related to Hurricane Sandy.
Folks, here is a lesson in homegrown social media success. While it has long been known as an obsession of my generation, it can be difficult for just-starting-out businesses to learn how to grapple with this fact and to lasso it into a useful tool for getting non-virtual dollars into their budgets. At this point, we know of the tried-and-true ways for businesses to use social media for their benefit — primarily, starting conversations with customers or potential customers, generating interest, and responding to complaints. We also know there are 
