About a
month ago I came across with Veet Finland’s ‘Me Time’ content marketing campaign
on Facebook. The point of the campaign was to get people to comment on a post
and describe their perfect night. In the post there was a photo of a young
woman in a bathroom eating ice cream and a quote ‘Amusing night with three of
my best friends: Ben, Jerry and Veet’.
The
reaction was probably not what the publisher expected: people attacked the post
with sarcasm and anger. On the other hand the reaction was quite obvious since
defining waxing as an enjoyable pastime seems a bit, well, sarcastic.
As pointed
out on Vapa Media blog post, the moderator of the Facebook page reacted too
slowly and didn’t really get the point of the comments. Finally the ‘Me Time’
post and its comments were deleted. Not a smart move.
According to professor Vilma Luoma-aho, the problem was that Veet wanted to create
positive associations around waxing when most people know it’s not fun or
relaxing. Considering this, people may think their feelings are ignored. Additionally,
when Veet realized the mistake they had made, they deleted the expressed
feelings as they didn’t fit their expectations.
One
challenge with content marketing is creating engaging content. Veet managed to
engage people but in a wrong way. To avoid negative engagement one should
Someone once said that all publicity is good publicity. Before this incident I knew the brand Veet but I didn’t know about their Facebook page. Now I’m almost considering liking the page in hope of seeing more hilarious marketing failures and especially people’s reactions to them. Then again, I hope for the brand’s sake they change their approach on content marketing. There’s a thin line between being entertaining and being ridiculous.
- know their customers and appreciate their feelings
- be able to admit their failures and learn from them.
Someone once said that all publicity is good publicity. Before this incident I knew the brand Veet but I didn’t know about their Facebook page. Now I’m almost considering liking the page in hope of seeing more hilarious marketing failures and especially people’s reactions to them. Then again, I hope for the brand’s sake they change their approach on content marketing. There’s a thin line between being entertaining and being ridiculous.
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| Trial and Error Part II? |
This is a great example of engaging people in a wrong way. I have never heard about this before. I agree that there is a thin line with being entertaining and being ridiculous. It is hard for some ones to see this.
VastaaPoistaAfter reading your blogpost, I assume Veet’s goal for their marketing campaign was to get acknowleged as a brand and gain brand awareness, the post was probably supposed to be kind of funny also, which it might have been for some people. But didn’t they manage in a way if their page was being flooded with comments and they even got you to ”almost liking” the page, when you didn’t even know they had a Facebook page?
VastaaPoistaThanks for your comments! Yeah, I guess they succeeded in engaging people, but that's really not the point of it all. Engagement should lead to positive word-of-mouth and buying the brand's stuff. Maybe I could like the Facebook page, but there's no way this type of marketing would inspire me to buy Veet products.
VastaaPoistaThis was a good read! I remember Veet's Me Time campaign and how it all went so hilariously wrong. I think you summarised and analysed the campaign very well.
VastaaPoistaI wanted to comment on this because my blog post is quite similar to yours. It's almost sad how much companies suck with content marketing. Even the big brands seem to forget the basic rules of Internet. Rule number one: what once was in Internet, will always be in Internet. (Like deleting comments actually could repair damages..) Rule number two: Everything should not be shared. (Why would anybody want to share to the world their "Perfect night" ??)
VastaaPoistaThis was really good blog-post. I faintly remember this Veet´s Me Time campaign and I remember that I was amused. I thought this was hilarious joke. I honestly thought that it was a campaign made from a man, because any woman that I know would not ever do waxing in the presence of a man (not even in front of hubby/bf). It apparently can be the one thing out of two that kills the relations ship ;) if believing to the Grandma´s generation. Secondly and honestly who can eat ice-cream at the same time? It did not stop me buying Veet products thought.
VastaaPoista