With the recent Nestlé vs. Greenpeace Facebook debacle and Kevin Smith live-tweeting as Southwest Airlines staff kicked him off a flight because he was deemed “too fat to fly”, some* predict 2010 will be the Year of the Social Media Crisis. (Y2.01K?!)


Here’s what’s happening:

Companies entering social media without an adequate understanding of the space, insufficient planning & resource allocation
+
Detractors, critics, angry consumers and mommy bloggers [*shiver*] are better able to mobilise and coordinate attacks against said companies
=
[cue doomsday music]

The perfect social media shit storm.


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Oh noes, another cyberstoning!

Toyota’s Australian marketing folks are copping it for their unconventional RFP process, which has agencies competing their best Toyota Yaris campaigns against one another to take home the glory, the honour, the respect of their peers… and a retainer relationship with the car company! You can just see the agencies frothing at the mouth over this.

If you’re not familiar with Toyota’s social media ‘experiment’ here’s a quick overview (mUmBRELLA goes a bit more in-depth):

• 8 of the big digital/viral/guerrilla/social media/PR/advertising/[insert marketing buzzword here]  agencies were asked to devise a social media campaign for the Yaris
• they were given 2 weeks dev time and a budget of 15k
• the top 5 were allowed to take their campaigns live and face the public
• the top 2 win projects with the company in the coming year

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