Be Careful What You Fish For
By Cindy Pae on Tuesday, December 11th, 2007I think of Greenpeace as an inherently serious and dedicated group (whether you agree with their tactics or not). If I were Greenpeace, I would WANT to be taken seriously given the cause. SO, I was a bit surprised that they came up with a mascot for their ‘Save the Whales’ campaign that was a bit ‘cartoony’. To top it off they held a ‘Name the Whale’ contest that allowed people to suggest names for the whale and let the public vote on the winner. However, when someone suggested the name “Mr. Splashy Pants“, well, they weren’t too happy.
As a side note - just add ‘Mr.’ (or Mrs.) to the front of something and ‘pants’ to the end, and it’s funny… in a junior high sort of way. Just start calling me ‘Mrs. Bloggy pants’. See? Not, I suspect, what Greenpeace was after.
Of course, to add insult to injury, the name went viral. Votes for Mr. Splashy pants skyrocketed. Then a funny thing happened - Greenpeace started to embrace Mr. Splashy pants. Mr. Splashy pants merchandise cropped up everywhere and people love it! To Greenpeace’s credit, they’re riding the tide (pun intended). However, time will tell how effective this campaign is to their cause.
The moral here is:
- If you’re going to run a contest, make sure you have some controls in place
- If you want to be taken seriously, don’t have a cartoon as a mascot
- If you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em, and…
- Be careful what you
fishwish for
Hi Mrs. Bloggy Pants. (You know I had to do it!)
The fear of getting an unexpected response is so many times what holds companies back from tying user generated campaigns.
But, social influence is huge. Wade Forst shared with me a fact he read in OMMA magazine - 62% of online shoppers read peer reviews and 80% of them were directly influenced by them. I know I am! I only picked a down comforter from Amazon.com - a gift for a family member - after reading the peer reviews until my eyes bled. No review was perfect, but the feedback helped me narrow my choices.
Simply, companies need to be prepared to take the good with the bad, and realize that the positive often outweighs the negative; as is the case with Splashy Pants here … (which just makes me giggle, btw).
I view peer review of products a little differently than a naming contest, though. I, too, use them to make almost ALL of my purchasing decisions. But, if you’re a company and are looking for input from customers, you’ll want to at least have some level of ‘editorial control’ over what is suggested. They’re lucky it wasn’t vulgar. The premise was a good one - let people decide, but they almost got themselves in hot water with it. Even comment boards reserve the right to remove inappropriate submissions, so it’s not beyond consideration.