Social Media Case Study: Smirnoff Facebook Campaign Redeemed!

What had started off as an annoying rant has now turned into a successful case study for Social Media.  In one of my previous posts I referred to Smirnoff’s Facebook Social Media TV campaign to be flawed.  A fabulous advert on UK national TV directing people to their new Facebook fan page… a fan page that didn’t exist which drove me slightly potty, to the point I had to write a post on it (click here to read original post and then come back).

Lo and behold two weeks later I got a lovely apologetic email from Smirnoff.  Now the cynic in me thinks “well they know I work in social media and will therefore write this great piece about them” but then the other optimistic part of me is ecstatic to see social media working in full flow.

Social Media Monitoring

So for those who don’t know how the system works Smirnoff will be paying someone in-house or an agency to monitor their brand.  These monitoring tools such as Radian6 and Meltwater Buzz track all Smirnoff’s mentions in blog posts, forums, networks and so on.  They are also clever enough to pick up if the blogs (and sentiments) are negative or positive.  Positive will be used as a pat on the back, testimonials etc and the negatives are sent to customer service/PR department to deal with.  They now have the opportunity to turn this negative comment into a positive.

Smirnoff are implementing the social media model effectively. Interacting with the conversation, listening to what is being said and reacting accordingly.

Smirnoff’s Response

Hi Katrina,

I hope you are well? I am contacting you on behalf of Smirnoff regarding your article on the recent advert and the direction message to Facebook.
It’s really important to us that we work with our consumers on matters like this, so we have looked into your problem, and the reason you have been unable to access the page is as follows:

The SmirnoffGB Facebook page has until now been set so that it is only available to UK IP addresses. This was originally put in place because our competitions are only open to a GB audience. Unfortunately Jersey, Guernsey and the Isle of Man were not included under ‘GB’ in this restriction. Based on this and your feedback we have lifted this restriction and the page is now open to all markets. Competitions will still only be open to GB residents however, but you will now be able to see all our content and find out about all our events.

We apologise for this oversight and hope that you’ll still be happy to engage with us and get involved in some of our activities and content. It is never our intention to annoy any of our consumers, which is why we looked into this and have made the correction.

We’d really like to make sure you remain happy with Smirnoff and keep following the brand, so if you’d like to send me your address we will send you some product by way of apology.

Cynic or Optimistic?

I’ll go with the optimistic!  It’s great to see companies using social media proactively.  The fact that a small blog can impact on a top brands campaign is fantastic. Over 200,000 extra people can now access the Smirnoff fan page that were previously excluded…just a shame we cant enter, even though we are part of GB!

Naturally a free product by way of apology is also a bonus…although Im thinking I should’ve started with Chanel or Versace

What’s your take on Smirnoff’s response or do you know of any other good case studies you would like to share?