Comments on: 3M’s Post-It Note Viral Marketing Attempt – Redux

By: steve booth

steve booth — Wed, 25 Feb 2009 20:33:32 +0000

hey Melanie,
The title of this post caught my eye. I used to work for 3M, and have always admired them. That said, I read your original post, and am disappointed in my old company. I don’t see why they didn’t give the guy credit and some money. Looks like they may learn a painful message in social media and karma. steve booth

By: Kelley Mitchell

Kelley Mitchell — Thu, 15 Jan 2009 06:30:00 +0000

Hello Melanie,

I see what you mean. Thanks for your comments.

Kelley

By: Melanie Phung

Melanie Phung — Wed, 14 Jan 2009 15:12:50 +0000

Thanks for the great feedback, Kelley! Comments like that are really valuable to me.

I would like to think, however, that there are lessons for a small business in my original post as well. Core principles like respecting the consumers (and potential brand evangelists) and understanding their power in today’s media environment, are applicable to anyone with a business. While a very small business may not undertake a massive social media marketing campaign, it can still suffer the consequences if a badly treated customer/vendor chooses to air his grievances online.

If you boil it down, 3M had to weigh two options: work with the photographer or copy his photo and risk a backlash. (Alternatively, they could have picked some other subject to shoot, so make that three options.) What was that risk avoidance worth to them? Did they even factor in the risk?

I’m sure you as a small business owner face choices all the time – e.g., cut a corner and save a couple of bucks, or hold to a higher standard to keep customers around? Cheat, lie, steal and be disrespectful… or do right by people? In the end, I think the online lessons aren’t all that much different from off-line lessons. (It’s just that everything online tends to be amplified.)

By: Melanie Phung

Melanie Phung — Wed, 14 Jan 2009 13:22:03 +0000

@malcolm – thanks for the heads up. I can see where the code is borked; I’ll work on getting that fixed as quickly as I can.

By: Kelley Mitchell

Kelley Mitchell — Wed, 14 Jan 2009 05:57:58 +0000

While I was entertained by your original post on the 3M debacle and appreciated getting the whole story, I was more impressed with this post on what you would have done differently.

The first post was about how a large corporation screwed up and there didn’t seem much I could learn in regards to my own small, I mean tiny, company. But this post had much more value because of multiple takeaways by sharing what you learned.

We also learned more about you as a person like when you mention being mindful of your friend’s reputation and your choice not to ridicule specific people at3M.

This was an excellent post. Thanks for sharing.

By: malcolm coles

malcolm coles — Mon, 12 Jan 2009 21:15:48 +0000

Talking of things going wrong, the links on your blog commenters have gone weird (they go …com%20rel= etc). The external/nofollow thingamybob seems mushed into the URL. So they won’t work in firefox 3, and safari gives up. Just so you know!

By: Scott Hepburn

Scott Hepburn — Sat, 10 Jan 2009 01:32:46 +0000

Wow, Melanie — nice post mortem on the 3M debacle! This is a great blueprint for how to “work” social media — a reminder that you have to do more than slap up a post and fire off a Tweet about it.