Prank spread on social media taints Domino’s brand

The New York Times:

As Domino’s is realizing, social media has the reach and speed to turn tiny incidents into marketing crises. In November, Motrin posted an ad suggesting that carrying babies in slings was a painful new fad. Unhappy mothers posted Twitter complaints about it, and bloggers followed; within days, Motrin had removed the ad and apologized.

On Monday, Amazon.com apologized for a “ham-fisted” error after Twitter members complained that the sales rankings for gay and lesbian books seemed to have disappeared — and, since Amazon took more than a day to respond, the social-media world criticized it for being uncommunicative.

To paraphrase Homer Simpson: Speed, the cause of and solution to all our problems.

BusinessWeek: Social Media Marketing Myths

According to BW, it’s not easy or cheap, but if you’re not marketing via social media, you’re behind.

That makes sense for most of the BW audience, but there are plenty of examples of big and small businesses dipping their toe into social media using in-house resources and negligible budgets and achieving extraordinary results. It’s not the bells and whistles, it’s the quality of the conversation.