I’ve always admired Saatchi & Saatchi and I still do. But even the best of agencies will have their share of mistakes. It’s about learning from them and moving on.The thing I respect about Saatchi & Saatchi in this instance is that it dared to push the envelope and to venture into an area it did not have much experience in.
So what exactly happened?
So what exactly happened and how did Saatchi & Saatchi land itself in a social media disaster? For more info, you can visit mUmBRELLA’s write-up on it.
In a nutshell, though, Saatchi & Saatchi decided to incorporate social media into its campaign for Toyota’s Yaris without the help of a digital agency, and some things went wrong. Sadly, the world can be quite unforgiving of “mistakes”. The story soon spread to Aussie news sites, British news titles, the Aussie papers, US media and large global ad blogs.
As part of the Yaris social media campaign, a Facebook page managed by Saatchi & Saatchi was set up and on this page, S&S ran a video competition. Members of the Facebook page just needed to create videos about the Yaris and the top videos would win $7,000, $3,000 and $1,000 for first, second and third prizes respectively. Unfortunately, the participation level was dismal because many of us in the social media space are probably tired of such video competitions run on Facebook pages to count towards eyeballs and ROI.
Faced with the embarrassing prospect of few entries, Saatchi & Saatchi opened the competition to its production houses in the following email:
From: Rob
Subject: Clever Comp
Hey creative people
I’ve got something that you’ll (or your housemates, brothers, sisters, artistic friends etc will) be interested in.
It’s a film comp in aide of promoting Toyota Yaris.
“A film comp? I don’t have the time!” you may say, but listen up. So far, NO ONE has entered and it has been open for more than 10 days and closes 1st December. Voting is done on hits and comments so if you’re in first you have a huge advantage. And you don’t have to make an ad, just put a Yaris in somewhere a la the ‘number 8′ or ’spring’ in Tropfest or something
First prize is $7,000. $3,000 for second and $1,000 for 3rd. At this stage, you could enter a picture of your cat playing in his kitty litter and win 7 grand.
Details are in the attachments. If you win, I’d love an all carbon fibre road bicycle for Christmas.
Cheers y’all.
-Rob
This initiative garnered entries from the production houses as there was also an understanding that the winning production house entry would win S&S’s business to produce Toyota Yaris’ ads. A team comprising of S&S and Toyota representatives came together to decide on the winning entry and TADA, presenting the winning entry (with no lack of sexual references by the way):
My thoughts on this whole episode?
- While many in the world are slamming Saatchi & Saatchi for this incident, I would like to speak up on behalf of S&S (no, I am not an employee of S&S and I have no connections with it) because I must say I admire S&S’s courage in pushing the envelope and expanding into an area that it had little experience in. I know some will call this foolhardy but honestly, are agencies which allow risk-aversion to prevent them from playing with new ideas and charting new territory, in this modern world of innovation, any less foolhardy? At the end of the day, the best of agencies have their share of “mistakes” but if their achievements and acquired capabilities outweigh these “mistakes”, the world will recognize them as commendable and respectable agencies.
- I’ve also learned from this incident that in the social media space it’s so important to create intangible value for users. Sure, the video competition promised cash prizes for winning entries but clearly that wasn’t enough to get users involved. Tangible benefits were not enough. The main problem was probably that the Facebook page already lacked content that would bring users back to the page to interact with the content and to even want to join the page in the first place. Apparently, the videos were old viral videos that anybody active in the social media space would most likely have seen. Besides the video competition was a “tired” idea. Even the cash prizes could not convince users to join the page and the competition.
- Competitions on social media channels to drive user-generated content should stay that way – user generated. I think what enraged many people about S&S opening the competition up to its production houses was that the video competition was positioned with the production houses as a pre-business pitch. What was this? A video competition originally intended for amateurs and ordinary people to participate with equal chances of winning the cash prizes was not being opened to production houses (the professionals) as a pre-business pitch? Didn’t that mean that the winner was already pre-determined to be one of the production houses? At the same time, what made this situation worse was the fact that the winning entry was decided on by a panel of Toyota and S&S employees. If the contest was a user-driven contest in the social media space (which highly values egalitarianism), why wasn’t the winning entry decided upon by users? Or at least, why weren’t users given some (if not total) say in the results of the contest?
- We must always go back to the basics – the core brand values. Another thing that got many people upset was the content of the winning entry. We’re talking about Toyota here – a brand that has long been associated with reliability and family life. In choosing the video entry that was replete with sexual references, Toyota (or S&S on behalf of Toyota) was going against Toyota’s core brand values. Even if they had wanted to energize Toyota’s brand to appeal to a younger audience, this had to be done carefully, without offending Toyota’s core fan base. This selection of such a controversial video was simply too sudden and radical.
That said, it is episodes like these that we should and must learn from, and I believe that Saatchi & Saatchi will learn from this to keep up its good work all these years.
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