I recently ran across a blog posting by Jeremiah Owyang on companies that got ‘punk’d’ by social media as I was researching stories exactly on this subject matter. I was researching this based on the recent downfall of Motrin and Johnson & Johnson with the negative backlash on the Motrin “Mommy Back Pain” ad they ran the past couple of days. For those of you that have not heard about this check out the actual ad on this youtube video:

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BmykFKjNpdY[/youtube]

Needless to say Motrin quickly pulled the ad and made a public apology for the incident. Listed below I want to highlight a few other negative responses by the social media world for certain company ads and practices. I also wanted to mention a few “Lessons Learned” to make sure that companies learn from their mistakes so to speak.

1. Wal-Mart gets caught with fake blogging

In this MediaPost article, it was discovered that 2 people that were traveling the country in an RV and blogging about their experiences for staying in Wal-Mart parking was actually a paid gig by Working Families for Wal-Mart (WFWM), an organization launched by Wal-Mart’s public relations firm Edelman. WFWM paid for the RV and all travel expenses, rerouted the trip’s original plan, and plastered a logo on the RV’s side. Though a banner ad announced WFWM sponsored the site, it did not divulge Wal-Mart paid for the couple’s RV, gas, food and other expenses.

Once the blogosphere discovered this reality it began the negative campaign of how Wal-Mart could sponsor these bloggers without exposing the fact that they were endorsed.

Lesson learned: Be transperant.

2. Target Bulls-eye

Earlier this year the New York Times reported that Amy Jussel the founder of ShapingYouth.org wrote an email to Target that their current ad featuring a young girl was completely inappropriate. The ad show a young woman displayed across the Target bulls-eye logo with the center of the bulls-eye being at the center of the young girl crotch.

Below is an excerpt of what happened:

“Targeting crotches with a bull’s-eye is not the message we should be putting out there,” she said in an e-mail interview.

Target offered an e-mail response:

“Unfortunately we are unable to respond to your inquiry because Target does not participate with nontraditional media outlets,” a public relations person wrote to ShapingYouth.

“This practice,” the public relations person added, “is in place to allow us to focus on publications that reach our core guest,” as Target refers to its shoppers.

Word of this exchanges quickly spread in the blogosphere but Target continued to hold its ground while communicating its position when asked for.

So what happened to the ad? The campaign continued for its duration.

Lesson learned: When replying to a negative concern in Social Media, listen and communicate your position.

3. Streisand Effect

This is the ‘grandma’ of them all if I may add when it comes to company and in this case celebrity faux pas in negative social media reactions. Wikipedia actually has a dedicated page describing this event in full detail. I will give a summary of what happened.

When a photographer took an aerial photograph of Barbara Streisand’s California home on the coastline she sued him for $50 million to not allow the photo to be publicly viewable. The photgrapher claimed he was photographing beachfront property to document coastal erosion as part of the California Coastal Records Project.

Of course as the photo got out on the internet it all went down from there as news of the story broke out the image spread like wildfire through the internet and the lawsuit news caused more damage than it did good in Streisand trying to protect the photo.

Lesson Learned: Don’t draw attention to a negative effect from Social Media. Once again listen and communicate your position to fan out the flame.