Back in January, the famous Australian wine brand [yellow tail] chose to donate $100,000 to the US Humane Society. As part of the “[tail] for tails” program launched by the brand, the donation aimed at demonstrating Yellow Tail’s commitment to rescue animals in peril.

But this move made American farmers, as well as consumers, upset, as the HSUS is opposed to factory farming and is allegedly using donations for political lobbying, rather than rescuing animals in peril.

How the crisis started:

Users poured angry comments all over the brand’s Facebook page. Troy Hadrick, a 5th-generation farmer from South Dakota,  resorted to YouTube to voice his disagreement, gathering more than 11,800 viewers to date.

Then, the discussion spilled to Facebook and Twitter. An alternate Facebook Page, Yellow Fail, gathered nearly 3,900 fans (vs. 2,200 for Discover Yellow Tail), while a #yellowfail hashtag provided buzz opportunities on Twitter.

How did Yellow Tail addressed the crisis?

Listening to consumers, yellow tail posted an official response on Feb 4th. Here is an extract:

We’ve listened to your recent feedback and it was very helpful to us – in fact it prompted us to specifically choose the areas where we’d most like to celebrate animals. Here’s what we’ve decided: We’ll still honor our monetary commitment to the HSUS, but now we are specifically directing our $100,000 donation to HSUS’ Animal Rescue Team, which launch on-the-ground missions to rescue animals in peril [...] We may not always agree with 100 percent of what an organization represents, but rescuing animals displaced from natural disasters is a cause we support.

Nevertheless, even if farmers and consumers are praising yellow tail for finally addressing their concerns, negative comments are still posted everyday. This shows such a crisis is extremely difficult to manage, and may entail consequences for weeks, if not months, to come. It might be interesting to know how much this breach in brand image has affected sales.

What lessons can we learn from this case?

If a brand wants to donate to a cause, it must do more research about who to donate to. Even if it’s a good cause, it doesn’t mean that the organization you are donating to doesn’t have foes. And if it has, why, who are they, and are they part of your consumer base and/or able to influence your audience?

For a wine brand, donating to an organization that is at war with the farming community is pretty dangerous. Vine growing and winemaking are also linked to agriculture. And the same goes for wine consumption: wine goes well with food, and wine pairs beautifully with meat.

A case study demonstrating the influence of the farmers’ community online

One of the most interesting facts in the Yellow Tail case is how the farmers community has been able to create a platform for a new conversation out of this accident. This shows a real shift in habits, interactions and use of technology, showing how new target audiences - namely the farmers community - have emerged online.

In fact, the Yellow Tail case gave a real opportunity for farmers, who were able to successfully use technology to rally consumer voices to their cause, leveraging Facebook, Twitter, industry sites and blogs to create a movement.

It may be a cheap shot to kick Maclaren strollers when they’re down, but the amputated finger storm that made it all the way to the Financial Times this week is a textbook example of why an active ongoing social media program is an essential facet of any good PR/marketing strategy.

By participating in the online conversation — having a company blog that is informative on issues important to parents (say, safely transporting children), or by contributing to customer sites, blogs and forums tangentially related to Maclaren products – the company would have been a bit less tone deaf and flat-footed in the face of such sensational news.

The FT does a good job today in “How Not To Take Care of a Brand” by John Gapper of detailing the missteps: ranging from delayed and insufficient reaction to complaints in the US (but not in other markets) to twittering and posting crisis/recall-specific pages that turned out to be dead links.

Know thy customer: “Anything relative to child safety tends to be off-the-charts viral,” says Pete Blackshaw, a brand consultant for Nielsen Online. According to Blackshaw’s data, new mothers are three times more likely than others to use social media and start blogs. “Given the higher order of sensitivity, parents are much more diligent,” says Blackshaw. “They want to talk to friends, family and even strangers about their decisions. They’ll go the extra distance.” Yahoo News

A pervasive product being used by such a connected and impassioned customer-base is usually the Holy Grail for a brand — and a strategic ongoing social media program is certainly essential for getting there. Maclaren shows us one other reason to be engaged and in-touch online: it can also help a brand withstand the riptide popular discontent.

“Following a new RFP, The CIVB (Bordeaux Wine Council) has chosen CreativeFeed and Selavi, two agencies located in New York City, to manage the promotion of its wines in the USA and Canada from 2009 to 2011. CreativeFeed will direct Bordeaux’s interactive marketing campaigns for a total annual budget of $1.33 million. On the other hand, Selavi will manage Bordeaux’s events calendar.”

Could this phrase soon replace the ubiquitous “Google it” response to all things unknown? Microsoft certainly hopes so. With the launch of its new Decision Engine, Bing, searchers are offered more detailed information for the decisions that matter most to them. Like in popular categories such as travel, health, shopping, local directions, restaurant reviews and traffic maps.

CreativeFeed was tapped by JWT New York to help launch the new Decision Engine. One aspect of the CreativeFeed contribution was devising a remarkable way to demonstrate live online search results to pedestrians and drivers in cities in the northwest US. Commuters were informed via digital truck-mounted billboards displaying real time results from Bing. Drivers could now get live updates as to which highway provides the faster commute. To showcase the Travel feature of Bing, the same innovative technology was used to display the destinations that have travel deals on airfare at that moment.

Read the Article

Creativity does not (and should not) stop at campaigns and ads that a lot of times don’t get noticed. We would hope that everyone notices our cool, chic print ad, but in all honesty, there are so many out there that only radical (sometimes downright bizarre) forms of creativity get appreciated.

AND in all honesty, our eccentric Creatives (whom we so dearly love) need some free reign. They dream up ideas, the rest of the company scrubs the edges, et voilà! We have a product that makes consumers tick.

http://cnbceb.com/marketing/not-just-a-pretty-face/951/

For under $10, you could get your very own banker stress doll to sqeeze everytime you’re feeling the squeeze! We aren’t the only ones that think this is a great idea– check out The Wallet from WSJ:

How Will You Spend Your $10 Tax Credit?

The Wallet discovers Squeeze the Banker