Learning from the 3M Post-It Note debacle: Social media ethics defined

One of the most amazing things about the Web is that when an idea takes off on the Web, it can propel a brand to fame and fortune. Marketers particularly love when this happens to a product without their influence. There's no better way to get your product out there than to have people talking about it via word-of-mouse. Think iPhone. Remember Mentos and Diet Coke Geysers?

I call it a World Wide Rave.

However, when companies don’t understand social media or those that hide behind legal eagles and public relations experts frequently get tripped up. Then people talk. A lot. And they say lots of unkind things about your brand.

I call that a World Wide Rant.

Consider the 3M Post-It note debacle. Dozens of blogs have covered this in the past few weeks and I had thought it was common knowledge so I had held off writing about it. However, when I mentioned it in a presentation yesterday, only a tiny percentage of people were aware, so here are the basics:

Scott Ableman and some colleagues strategically placed 14,000 3M Post-It Notes onto a co-worker's Jaguar. The photos they took became a phenomenon with hundreds of thousands of people looking at the photos he posted on Flickr. I have a few below, but you can see them all on Ableman's Flickr page.

Any marketer would be thrilled at this. 3M obviously was, because of what happened next, but instead of celebrating Ableman's cool idea and giving him credit, they messed up.

Ableman writes: "After all the completely free publicity we generated for the folks from 3M Post-Its, they contacted me asking if they could use these photos on their back-to-school store merchandising this summer. When I asked what their budget was, they wrote back and said they didn't want to pay to use the photos. Instead, they copied what we'd done, took their own photos, and used them to create a national marketing campaign. So if you saw this in a store, you saw a copy created by 3M."

According to Melanie Phung in her post 3M Carjacks the Post-It Note Jaguar, the amount of money we're talking is a measly thousand bucks or so.

Here is the 3M copycat campaign, again courtesy of Ableman's Flickr page.

Take a look at all the bloggers with negative posts about the 3M behavior. Yikes. I wouldn't want to be a marketer at 3M right now.

Contrast that to what Pete Healy, vice president of marketing for Perfetti Van Melle USA, makers of Mentos did. They immediately linked to the original, famous video with the Mentos and Diet Coke geysers from the official Mentos site. When I spoke with Healey, he told me that he contacted the guys who made the video and offered the company’s support. "When they appeared on Late Night with David Letterman and The Today Show, we were there," he says.

You need t be social media aware if you want to propel a World Wide Rave and to prevent a World Wide Rant. Here are some ideas.

David Meerman Scott's Social Media Guidelines:

1. Transparency
–Never pretend to be someone you are not

2. Privacy
–Unless given permission, don’t blog about something disclosed to you

3. Disclosure
–Disclose anything people might consider a conflict of interest

4. Truthfulness
–Don’t lie

5. Credit
–Give credit to bloggers (and other sources) whose material you have used in your blog

(Number 5 is the one 3M violated).

Comments

[Fred]

Wow, thanks for the story -- guess I did miss this one. It's funny that in the blogosphere the "unwritten rules" of how to fairly treat people who create cool content via linking and such is well established, but as soon as you get major companies involved what seems common sense is a whole lot more funky.

Nice to see that the blogosphere offers a nice form of retribution for the afflicted parties!

- Fred

[Melanie]

Thanks for helping to spread the story of 3M's social media missteps (to put it kindly). One other guideline I'd like to add - or perhaps to expand on your rule #1 - is "authenticity".

Users on the web are a lot more savvy than they were just a few years ago.

While this attempted viral campaign wasn't exactly "astroturfing" in the traditional sense, it was exposed as being a highly orchestrated recreation of a genuine, spontaneous event. One that was intended to fool the public.

Not cool, 3M. Not cool.

[Chel]

I'd say it's astounding but it's not really when you consider that the majority of companies don't really understand making conversation. They understand profits, not customers. Until these companies learn to work with content creators there will be more instances like this.

I wholeheartedly agree they made a huge mistake. I just wonder how long it's going to take before it's mainstream to talk with your customers that are doing cool things with your products rather than stealing from them.

[Craig]

Wow, I didn't know about that story but thanks for bringing it to my attention. That is a good case study on how a company should not react to a situation like this. The prank reminds me of a prank I was part of in college when a bunch of us completely placed tinfoil all over our friends room. I mean every inch of floor, wall, ceiling, books, tv, furniture, etc was covered. Too bad that didn't spread and get us some attention from the tin foil makers.

Craig
www.budgetpulse.com

[Jared]

@Chel nails it 100%: "They understand profits, not customers"

All too often it is the large, old, public companies that simply do not (cannot?) understand how to use these situations effectively. They don't "get it" that operating behind a curtain of fear and absolute control is terrible for your brand these days.
(a link could be drawn to politics, but I'll leave that for a different discussion...)

[DaveMurr]

Simple but effective list - reminds me of the "rules" they hang in martial art dojos.

In all fairness to 3M - they may not have known any better... I mean from their course of action from the pictures, it really doesn't sound like they understood how the whole social media thing worked...maybe they did, and if so then they deserve a slap on the wrist.

Thank you for sharing

[Linas Simonis, PositioningStrategy]

"They understand profits, not customers"

That's because CEOs and Wall Street are from finance world, not from customer service or sales or marketing.

[David Meerman Scott]

Good discussions. Thank you all for commenting.

While "they understand profits, not customers" is likely true, there another thing:

They listen to lawyers too much.

Many people tell me that the reason that their company is not involved in social media is because the lawyers tell them that they should "stay quiet." But in these cases, that exactly the wrong thing.

David

[Melanie]

Re. Listening to the lawyers.

In this particular case, if they had consulted their in-house counsel, I'm sure the lawyers would have told them one of two things:

1) Don't contact the original photographer - you want to maintain plausible deniability that the similarities between his photos and ours are purely coincidental... or... 2) just pay the guy already.

[Mary]

I for one am boycotting 3M's products, and call on the rest of you to declare the same.

[Scott Jacob]

Another human trait may be in play here as well. I figure the person who goofed was probably young, right out of B-School and had a lofty vision of themself. "A few pranksters in a garage don't know anything about marketing - I can do better"

Why do people try to fight the tide of a viral bonanza? Ego, maybe...

Thanks as always,

Scott

[Shel Holtz]

You're spot on in everything you've said, David, as are preceding comments. However, this would have been unethical behavior in the pre-social media era. While I'm surprised to see 3M behaving this way, I would note that a bad idea is a bad idea whether it's enacted in the social media space or not.

[Kami W Huyse]

Somehow I missed this, but I have added it to my PRWorst tag at delicious and will use it as an example. As communicators in social media we really must learn to follow the rules of the road.

Funny thing is that under "normal" circumstances corporations like 3M are acutely aware of intellectual property issues. I find it interesting that they thought different rules applied in social media.

Some education is in order.

Kami

[Michael D. Wentworth]

The idea of giving recognition to others is a challenge for the corporate world where a employee's personal contributions are so critical. How does an employee prove their valuable by identifying how cool someone else is? In the social media world, that's value. But, sadly, that's not the case inside the Dilbert world.

[Michael Banovsky]

Great post. For those of us involved with social media on a daily basis, this sort of clueless marketing decision is sometimes hard to fathom. And, for those involved at 3M, the Internet promises to remember this incident for years to come. M!

[Scott Monty]

Sigh. When will people realize that "social media" doesn't mean "zero budget" or "you're free to steal my idea"? If anything, there should be even higher ethical standards than other forms of marketing because of the inherently personal nature of it.

[Karrine]

I am still in awe over how someone from 3M could NOT have understood the ramifications of their decision regardless of their knowledge of social media.

[The photographer]

It's the 3M staff lawyers who should be strung up over this. I'm sure they are the ones who told 3M's E-Marketing Supervisor to stop responding to the emails (even though she had initiated the conversation). She was probably too junior to know any better.

[JennKim]

Wow - 3M definitely will be used in my presentation as 'what not to do'. Thank you for sharing. Great case study and suggestions.

[bryan elliott]

Excellent case study. On a separate note, I found a great post by Peter Kim that highlights 134 brands and what they're doing in social media marketing. My blog has the post: http://bryanelliott.typepad.com

Thanks again!

[KateBo]

As someone who's about to start a corporate blog initiative for a large group, I'm definitely saving this blog post just in case! Case and point well argued! :-)

[Therese Minehan]

Thanks for the case study and raising these very important tips. I was surprised to hear of 3Ms less then professional tactic, lets hope this awareness teachers other corporates to play fair.

[Rebekah Donaldson]

@ Scott -- say more about "If anything, there should be even higher ethical standards than other forms of marketing..." That's intruiging.

[Rebekah Donaldson]

These are good guidelines!

I hew to the Google mission statement re business ethics: “don’t be evil.”

Which of course is useless because it begs the question.

Still, though, it’s nice and short. Short is good. Long is usually evil.

SO, if forced, I'd rephrase as "don't lie, cheat or steal."

But wait... don't be a truth-telling, by-the-rules-playing, pay-for-what-you-take asshole either...

[David Meerman Scott]

Sometimes I say "If your mother would say it i wrong, it probably is..." David