Chapstick Can Teach Other Business Hard-Won Lesson on Social Media Marketing

by: iCopywriter Senior Editor, Heather Price-Wright

Think your company has a fun, edgy, attention-grabbing ad campaign just about ready to roll out on social media platforms like Facebook?

You may be right - maybe those ads will be received exactly the way you intended them. People will chuckle, think, “Now that’s clever” and, best of all, remember your brand.

Or maybe people will find your ad campaign a little more than, ahem, cheeky, as was the response to this gem from Chapstick:

More than a few people who saw this ad found it offensive, saying it objectified women. In particular, blogger Margot Magowan of the blog “ReelGirl” called the ad sexist and encouraged her readership to “take Chapstick up on their bold-print offer to ‘Be Heard at Facebook.com/Chapstick.’”

Now, the arguments for both sides make a lot of sense. Does the ad seem to have anything to do with Chapstick? Not really. It truly is just a huge picture of a woman’s derriere. But, as lip balm users ourselves, we have to admit that we can relate to this ad (where is my lost Chapstick, anyway?), and concede that it is pretty clever. Plus, the butt featured is fairly innocuous - by which we mean clad in jeans and not shaking in the face of some rapper. As exploitative ads go, it’s pretty tame.

The real lesson here has little to do with the ad itself. Chapstick may or may not have made a small misstep there. But when people objected to the image, and voiced their objections, as the company itself suggested they do, on Chapstick’s Facebook page, a mysterious thing started happening.

The comments started to disappear.

And while Chapstick did eventually pull the ad and (sort of) apologize, the company’s excuse for all the missing comments was not all that satisfactory:

We apologize that fans have felt like their posts are being deleted and while we never intend to pull anyone’s comments off our wall, we do comply with Facebook guidelines and remove posts that use foul language, have repetitive messaging, those that are considered spam-like (multiple posts from a person within a short period of time) and are menacing to fans and employees.

We’re finding it pretty hard to believe that people like Magowan cursed in their Facebook posts, or that anyone undertook a massive spamming attack.

Which brings us to the lesson here: We live in radically social times. For the most part, that’s a good thing, especially when it comes to marketing efforts. But if you’re going to launch an ad campaign that’s anything other than squeaky clean, you’d better be ready to engage with your audience, because these days, they have almost infinite ways to express their feelings - whether amusement or rage - to you. Playing the social media game is not a choice anymore; it’s a necessity, and even the smallest business would do well to remember that.

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