Making a media mountain from a social molehill – in defence of Aldi’s social media intern
In this guest post Adam Woods argues Aldi’s much-derided recent social media campaign is actually a lesson in ignoring the irrelevant Twitter trolls.
The campaign, rather predictably, was the victim of two sets of Twitter trolls. The first, let’s call them ‘the 15-year-old boys’, filled in the blank with silly although quite obviously hilarious, phrases like ‘diarrhoea’ or ‘your Mum’.
The second group, let’s call them ‘The Authority’, couldn’t resist pointing out the stupidity of the campaign in the first place, replying with comments like, ‘Maybe ask the guys over at #yourtaxis how this could end up’ or, ‘Pretty sure Aldi’s social media intern is about to get fired’.
This social media faux-pas was even compared by B&T magazine to a 2013 campaign run by UK supermarket chain Tesco, which had previously been the subject of an investigation into its use of horse meat in many of its products. But this fundamentally misses the point; Tesco’s customers had real cause for complaint.
Gotta love the self-important Twitterati!
Yet another case of social media masking as news. Good on Mumbrella for exposing this ‘social media storm’ phenomonen. The fact that News has a social media reporter, let alone editor is disturbing because most SM reporting is very largely along the lines of a bunch of people with no particular knowledge of an issue responding to what they’ve been told and being upset. It’s the equivalent of asking people on the numb er 86 tram what they think of something – mostly not relevant.
The fact that we’re here, now, discussing this tweet tells me that the ‘ALDI social media intern’ has done better at his job so far this year than many of the aforementioned experts.
Well played.
I tend to agree Adam.
Was it sophisticated? No.
Was it causing any harm or offense? No.
Should someone be fired? No. People should learn and grow from mistakes. If they don’t, that is then a problem.
Interestingly Facebook was much more kind to Aldi where this post remains, with over 500 comments that are overwhelmingly positive. But then those are from their actual customers and not self-styled “commentators” or armchair experts.
I love Twitter, but for the love of God there are way more important things to waste a tweet on.
No – Aldi aren’t the victim of ‘self important Twitterati’, and their social media intern should not be celebrated.
It was just a crap campaign.
A large company trying to relate to its consumers by asking them to share ‘which of our products do you love most’ (for nothing in return) is lazy and a waste of space.
If you want your consumers to talk about you then execute it better than this. Good PR needs to be earned and bad PR deserves to be whacked.
And for the record, I became an Aldi lover when I tasted their Aldi cheese slices. Cheese is a complex grocery item especially when it comes to choosing the household cheese to suit many palates. Many of the conversations I’ve had with people about Aldi are around the unexpected delight at discovering the high quality of the food. So the social media question was bang on in terms of customer insight. Which is kind of important.
I love Mumbrella!
If you work in entertainment or media, you constantly have to navigate your way through a sea of bull-shit, hype and creative wankery; but Mumbrella always tells it like it is.
Well done to the “intern” (or possibly someone a little higher up the food-chain?) – people are talking about the campaign, Aldi is getting some mostly positive PR, and all for zero spend. That’s great ROI.
Jason Leigh, you seem to show anger, I think you’d love to work for a challenger brand (most people live) like Aldi-they are the virgin brand of supermarkets!!
Ah Deb…who cares about customer insight when the high & mighty on Twitter know best right?! Honestly we are becoming a nation of absolute twats.
It’s simple, to the point and will appeal to their target audience in a way that will resonate (which in my guesstimation will probably not be many of the Twitter twats complaining).
Sigh. Another pointless social media storm in a cheap teacup.
This was no mistake. The kid has nailed it.
I know this might sound old-fashioned. But what did Aldi think of the campaign? How were they measuring? Was it just to create the ubiquitous ‘buzz’ , change minds, influence, perhaps they were just ‘testing’? Who knows. Ultimately it comes down to what the client thought – would be interesting to hear from Aldi. Often we have done highly strategic campaigns which were very successful from the client’s objectives but might not look so to the casual observer.
How sad is it that we always have to consider the worst case scenario in every media plan or campaign!! Whether this was an innocent campaign or naivety – it is still refreshing that someone, somewhere had optimism that people would only write good things.
Maybe if we put the negative comments in the appropriate boxes as Mumbrella has “juvenile humour” and those so “sanctimonious” amongst us and ignore the negatives (no publicity at all) the trolls would get the hint. Go back under your bridge – nobody likes you – still!!!
Woollies #freshinour memories still the #winner #fail by far …..
I just read a blog post, criticising another blog post about a Facebook Image post that asked customers to fill in a blank. About groceries.
What the ______ are we doing.
And this is another reason why Twitter is dying a slow death.
Use Facebook for these campaigns where you can engage with your true brand fans rather than a bunch of people whose voices should not reach further than their own ears.