I Tweeted recently that I’d received an invitation from someone working in social media to connect on LinkedIn who used the word “visionary” as a key word to describe themselves. I’m sorry, but you need to be a yogi, solve hunger or invent time travel to be a visionary. That or be a member of ‘Visionaries: Knights of the Magical Light (left) and have an awesome moustache. Although a quick search on LinkedIn proves visionary remains a rather popular appellation.

This brings me neatly to a report on Ad Age on the growth of the social media gurus, which is a sub industry in its own right. The report says there are 181,000 social media ‘Gurus,’ ‘Ninjas,’ ‘Masters,’ and ‘Mavens’ on Twitter. Add to that a few visionaries.  Read More »

When will brands ever learn? Do people not use the internet and read stuff? When it comes to social media we are now at a point when we have a fat pile of case files detailing how various brands have failed at social media, but this does not apparently stop other brands copying these mistakes over and over again.

This time around it is the turn of American Apparel. It has had the bright idea of rolling out a “Hurricane Sandy Sale” ad and as you might guess has sparked something of a Twitter backlash and ensured its brand will forever be linked with the words “social media fail”.

Earlier this year it was KFC Thailand doing its best to fail on social media. While the country was watching tsunami warnings and fearing the worst the fast food firm posted a message on its official Faceook page suggesting it was some time for tasty chicken as they watched the drama unfold. Read More »

So was it a success or was a social media fail? Earlier we reported on how Waitrose’s latest foray into social media appeared to have gone awry.

It was hijacked by people making fun of the supermarket’s perceived top end social status on Twitter and Facebook. Launched on Monday the store asked shoppers to compete this tweet: “I shop at Waitrose because…” and add a hashtag.

Instead of using the #WaitroseReasons hashtag to celebrate why they loved Waitrose people were instead using it to say things such as “I shop at Waitrose because the parking spaces are big enough for one’s Range Rover yah? #waitrosereasons”. Read More »

Greenpeace appears to have stirred the wrath of some car enthusiasts in the process of taking Volkswagen to task over its deletion of negative comments on Facebook as part of its long running Star Wars themed campaign targeting the car firm.

The environmental charity is mobilising supporters and encouraging them to question Volkswagen’s environmental policies on social media channels – particularly the carmaker’s own Facebook pages. When VW did not respond to these comments and then deleted them, Greenpeace declared it to be a ‘social media fail’.

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