Opinion

Louie The Lie

Have you ever noticed that when a brand uses social media to treat its customers like a bunch of chumps, it ends up regretting it?

The latest example is, of course, Mortein’s now backfiring death of Louie The Fly stunt.

From the moment the brand issued a press release from marketing director Chris Tedesco announcing: “It was a hard decision, but Mortein has decided to kill off Louie The Fly once and for all,” the whole thing smelled as bad as Louie’s favourite garbage pile.  

For starters, it’s unusual for brands to have a press release ready to send out 37 minutes into the next working day after news has broken of them killing off their mascot, unless it was already written.

Even more so, when you’ve just started a Facebook page for that very same mascot.

But let’s give them the benefit of the doubt. Let’s assume, just for a moment, that the announcement was a sincere one. And that the marketing team has been genuinely shocked by the public wave of support for Louie.

Kind of makes them incompetent idiots not to understand their brand, doesn’t it? Would you give a job to anybody who would so casually kill of half a century of brand equity without having done any basic research?

Surely you’d have to be the world’s worst marketing director?

But the other assumption, of course, is that when Tedesco allowed the statement announcing Louie’s death to go out in his name – and remember, he used the phrase “once and for all” – he was lying.

In which case the brand seems to have assumed a pretty dopey public will follow the script – and sadly, there are plenty of them on the Louie The Fly facebook page who have  – and get upset about Louie’s death.

And that the media will lap up the story.

Which they did – until the weekend at least.

The media has now woken up to the fact that it looks like they were hoaxed. Funnily enough, they tend not to have much of a sense of humour about being made to look like idiots.

I suspect that the rest of the story will not now be the planned one of Mortein rescuing Louie.

And I’m particularly thinking of The Sun-Herald’s Rachel Browne, who was credulous enough to write the original story. I suspect that the next tip that arrives at Fairfax Media from the Red Agency may be treated with a degree more cynicism.

But more damaging for the brand will be the members of the public who now feel, to use former Euro RSCG ECD Rowan Dean’s words, “deliberately duped”.

You’d think that a company like Reckitt Benckiser, with its household-focused brands, would value consumer trust.

But I’m not so sure. You see, the brand’s got previous. It’s only a couple of months since the same team brought us the Napisan stunt to offer $25m to sponsor the White House.

There was a cynicism at the heart of that one too. I suspect the reason why it failed to get PR traction was because the central purpose was obviously never sincere.

http://youtu.be/VZ6UyQ0GTPY

Update: Red Agency tells me there was far more coverage of the White House stunt than I’ve been able to find on Google News, including:

PR reach of 11 million people in Australia
87% share of voice versus major competitors
150 minutes earned media on radio in Australia
72 media items across Australia in 2 months. Norm is 5.
A further 140 media items globally
2 x 6 minute segments on National US TV
Social media reach of over 600,000

Ironically, the backlash does now have the potential to damage the standing of the Louie the Fly mascot. Wouldn’t it be ironic if they have to kill him off?

Tim Burrowes

[SURVEYS 20]

(Please note that the purpose of this survey is for satire only. It should be treated with as much weight as Mortein’s public poll of whether to save Louie)

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