Truth Awareness: Dissecting Blog Transparency: BK Diddy

I posted a few days ago about the challenge of Operational Transparency for brands, and the recent Wal-Mart snafu regarding blog transparency and the backlash that resulted.

Caffeine Marketing recently reported on similar backlash with Diddy+BurgerKing. I reprint below:

When DiddyTV partnered with Burger King to bring the rap star’s personal diary to YouTube, an almost instant negative response was heard around the social networking world. MTV explained how the DiddyTV video diary created an instant negative response from users. Within hours of the DiddyTV’s launch there were over 1,700 negative comments left. Such commentes included “Diddy supporting Burger King will make me not want to go eat there now, I’ll go to Wendys.”



Lynne Johnson of Fast Company says that it could be worse. She points out that marketers need to be extremely delicate when entering social networking sites such as YouTube, MySpace, and Facebook.

The Facebook Backlash took an enormous toll on Facebook and DiddyTV should have taken precedent when entering the YouTube market. The discussion of delicately entering social networking sites is the subject matter of a recent New York Times story that discusses the encroachment of marketers. New York Times brought up the important point that MARKETERS AND ADVERTISERS NEED TO BRING SUSTAINABLE VALUE TO THESE SITES AND ADD VALUE TO THE USER'S EXPERIENCE. The article also explains that a successful social networking campaign does not push the conusmer, rather, they provide blended content.

via Caffeine Marketing