Super Bowl 50’s biggest loser was the Carolina Panthers. But the public didn’t fair too well either, there were no brilliant ads ands let’s not even talk about whatever this thing is:
This months social media win or fail is probably a win with just a touch of fail.
Red Lobster got a ton of free publicity when Beyonce was singing her new single, Formation. She mentions Red Lobster during one of lyrics. “Mentions on Twitter 42,000 times in just an hour and trended for the first time ever.” However, Red Lobster took 8 hours to react. Posting this:
It took them 8 hours to tweet that. Fairly creative considering their name was used in a line referencing sex. They managed to contextualize the name of their biscuits. Now to be fair they were not expecting to be featured in the Super Bowl. But what are the chances that a Red Lobster marketing team member was not watching the Super Bowl or phone didn’t start lighting up when twitter caught fire about them. They missed an opportunity to really capitalize on this mention!
On the other hand Budweiser took just a few minutes to react to Peyton’s awkward ‘unplanned’ product placement. Budweiser is a little more use to using sporting events to their advantage.
Reportedly Red Lobster has had a 23% sales spikes since the incident. So it was not all bad. But if the team had been more reactive they might have been able to increase that percentage.
Biggest lesson learned. If you are a national brand, or a local brand with a high publicity event happening, make sure someone is watching the mentions and is prepared to respond. Work life balance can exist, but a social media manager should be ready to respond with 2 hours time, if not sooner.
