The last couple of days I have watched as a promotional campaign has gone wrong with Pepsi. They released an iPhone app for helping men ’score’ with the women, but really, it didn’t score anywhere.
You can do your own reading up on all the routes and comments consumers everywhere have posted, but what I would like to point out is Pepsi’s handling of this situation, particularly their use of Twitter in doing so. Most of the buzz on this topic has been passed around on Twitter, so it was only applicable Pepsi release their comments via this medium too, but, we all know corporate brands sometimes miss this mark. Not only have they correctly used the medium to voice their apoloogies and rationale, they have attached the #pepsifail hashtag to their remarks. I give them big, big kudos for realizing their mistake and using the word fail – on their own behalf.
Lots of us find it easy to point out a fail when it comes to someone else. A lot less of us are able to do it when it hits our own stuff. Follow the hastag to see what else develops and write down some lessons learned from Pepsi on this one. I am guessing this will all work in their favor in the end.
This makes sense. The people most upset about this are probably posting with and following the trending topic #pepsifail. In order to do effectiving damage control, Pepsi needs their Twitter comments to be seen by those people.