When customers ruin campaigns and how to avoid it

While we need and love all the customers we can get, sometimes we find out that they’re actively trying to sabotage us. Sometimes we don’t even find out until it’s way too late and we’re forced to kill an otherwise solid campaign.

Think this doesn’t happen? Take a look at some past real-world examples of people forcing companies to rethink what they’d just done.

Skittles’ Twitter trouble

A few years ago Skittles had the bright idea of using the up and coming service known as Twitter to their advantage. They realized the potential Twitter had to reach millions of people at once and wanted to capitalize on their fans talking about the product they loved: Skittles!

So they decided to put every tweet that involved the word “Skittles” on the front page of their website. I’m sure you can figure out what happened next: pandemonium. While a few people still talked about the candy in a loving manner, most of the tweets became profane, crazy, and some were just plain offensive.

The candy company quickly realized their mistake and pulled the campaign, which was unfortunate as it was rather a good idea. They put a lot of trust into the public and were betrayed.

Woody Harrelson breaks Reddit