#ShellFail - The (Greenpeace) Le'ts Go Campaign Hoax

Just last week, at the International History of Public Relations Conference, I heard a debate about 'professional PR' and 'activist PR'. The present experts and academics were discussing the issue of professionalism in PR and whether not-for-profit PR could be deemed as professional. I am quite sure that after the latest Let's Go campaign signed by Greenpeace, they will have no more doubts...


THE  CAMPAIGN

A fake launch event in Seattle, at the Space Needle, last June (2012) marked the start of the campaign. As you can see in the video, something went terribly wrong at the event...

The video was spread on Twitter with the hashtag #ShellFail and went viral. It also has a dubstep remix!

A fake Shell website (Arcticisready) was also created by the activist group.

On the site, the new (fake) Shell campaign 'Let's go', which was all about new drilling actions in the Arctic, was being promoted and users were given the opportunity to contribute by creating ads like these: 

A kids section with the game Angry Bergs (obviously recalling Angry Birds) was also available. 

A bogus Twitter account (@ShellisPrepared) was also created. 

The tweets looked rather suspicious and often unprofessional, so it wasn't difficult to understand who was actually tweeting...

However, the tweets helped spreading the ads and increasing the popularity of the #arcticsready trend.


Greenpeace admitted the campaign was launched by them and now that the hoax is public, the environmentalist group is spreading a new trend - #TellShell - in order to launch its last tactic - a competition.

Twitter users who tweet the hashtag will have the chance to win a t-shirt.

Shell sent out news releases stating that the company was considering legal action. However, it seems that the oil giant is taking its time to respond to the 'attack'.

MY OPINION

As the French would say... fantastique! The idea and the implementation are simply brilliant. Excellent way to 'undermine a personality' (Cwalina et al. 2011). I think there is no doubt: not-for-profit and activist PR can be as creative and as effective as for-profit PR. The level of professionalism in a number of cases is equal, as previously demonstrated by the performance of Greenpeace, WWF, Save The Children, Unicef, and many more organisations. Shell will struggle to react to this clever strategy.

(All images in this post are screenshots I took because I suspect the ads will be removed shortly).


Reference:
Cwalina, W., Falkowski, A., Newman, B.I., 2011. Political Marketing: Theoretical and Strategic Foundations. Warsaw: Sharpe Incoroporated.

#McFail - Beware of the Hashtag

From a brilliant example of PR to... a flop. Today I want to talk about the famous McFail.

(taken from here)

WHAT HAPPENED?

A few months ago (January 2012) the McDonald's started a 'hashtag campaign' on Twitter with the aim of generating some publicity and quality User Generated Content (UGC). They launched #McDStories and #MeetTheFarmers as promoted tweets.

It all started off pretty well with the McDonald's official account telling stories about the production of the burgers and cheese process... But soon enough Twitter users hijacked the hashtag and started tweeting disgusting stories and comments about past experiences at McDonald's.

                                                                 (taken from here)

(taken from here)

(taken from here)

(taken from here)

(taken from here)

Animal rights groups took the opportunity to share horrific images of McDonald's food.

The campaign lasted less than 2 hours. Rick Wion, social media director, had to call it off straight away.

WHAT WENT WRONG?

The social media team probably got stuck on the 'big idea', deciding to ignore the risks that it involved. The association between McDonald's and the word 'stories' was a dangerous one, and I refuse to believe that no one in the team raised their voice to question the campaign before the launch. With such a big name and a long history of complaints though, it was naive for the company to hope that it all would have worked out fine.

LESSON TO LEARN

UGC cannot be controlled on micro-blogging platforms such as Twitter. There is no chance for the companies to moderate the content and tone of what people think and publish. If you are really eager to launch a campaign that involves UGC, try to do it in a more controlled environment such as Facebook. There you can set your own rules before launching the campaign and then have the right to delete deleterious comments. Also, we must remember that the best UGC is usually spontaneous. If we try to force the public to write/talk about us, it can end very badly.