When Medibank learned about social media
Medibank wins Dr Mumbo’s social media catastrophe of the day award after some bright spark had the not-entirely-excellent idea of putting an unmoderated Instagram feed onto its website based on a hashtag.
And it’s fair to say that Medibank isn’t so much angry but disappointed in what the naughty people of the internet have done.
Yesterday the good folk of Reddit Australia became aware of the chink in Medibank’s engagement armour, and were soon helping the site along with their own takes on the #GenBetter hashtag.
Many images appearing on the Medibank page are perhaps a tad unseemly for Dr Mumbo to share, with lowlights including lot of genitalia and Anne Frank. Plus of course drug references and the Ku Klux Klan.
Another threw back to the infamous Lindy Chamberlain case asking: “If a dingo steals my baby and the cops think I made it up will I still get an insurance payout?”
And there are no prizes in guessing what someone with the handle @cockmclover posted on the page. Not one but three pictures of hand-drawn penises.
Eventually it seems someone from the brand noticed, and the 46 rogue posts have now been pulled down.
A Medibank spokesman kindly emailed Dr Mumbo to explain how the internet works:
“Over the last 24 hours, Medibank has become aware of the #genbetter hashtag being used on inappropriate and vulgar social media posts. We strongly condemn this trolling behaviour, which was not been prompted or encouraged in any way by Medibank.
“As a result of this activity, automated social media feeds on our Generation Better websites have been displaying offensive social media posts. These feeds are filtered for offensive keywords; unfortunately however these offensive posts were not picked up. As soon as Medibank became aware of this, we took steps to deactivate the site and remove the offensive content.
“When used in social media, hashtags are public in nature. Unfortunately, brands cannot own or manage how and when they are used. We apologise to any of our members or social media followers who may have been adversely affected by this activity.”
“When used in social media, hashtags are public in nature.
Unfortunately, brands cannot own or manage how and when they are used. ”
There’s tonne’s of services that let you moderate Instagram/twitter feeds which can be integrated into your website.
Poor excuse
Checked the code on the site, they were using Stackla.. Albeit not properly.
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This is such a non-story.
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An archive of the site and all the content: http://archive.is/G79Ys
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Doesn’t even mention the guerrilla marketing of http://www.memers.club
Join memers.club today!
Join memers.club today!
Join memers.club today!
Join memers.club today!
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Looks like they pulled the entire website. 404 not found… Seems rather drastic given their earlier comments to Mumbrella?
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Yawn… this really is a non-story.
And it really doesn’t need the sarcasm – “A Medibank spokesman kindly emailed Dr Mumbo to explain how the internet works” – given the focus of this story it seems like there actually *does* need to be some explaining.
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