Dr Pepper's Facebook campaign ticks off Moms

It's July and the seasonal Facebook hate is on full-force. Mediapost says that Facebook is becoming irrelevant, a boring chore. Even Computerworld chimes in with the five stages of Facebook grief, though none of the stages mention are grief related, the author is confused.

The real problem with facebook (if we forget about the whole privacy issue and the inane navigation) is that while you might belong in several social groups, not all of the people in each group belongs with all of yours. When social worlds collide, funny things happen.

The best facebook fail example of this phenomena we've seen today is the 2 girls one cup story at Make the Logo Bigger.

The background: Initially, mom found out about the whole Dr Pepper promotion the hard way. She discovered her 14-year old daughter’s status update was changed to something a little more than the usual teen chatter. (See the screen grab below of someone who had the same status update. Peckish is British slang for ‘hungry.’) As the rules of the contest state, signing up gives Dr Pepper permission to list one of the three possible levels of embarrassment for your chosen status.

Bill has a Q&A with the mom who first began the backlash in his post, go read it.

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Dabitch's picture

On thing that struck me as extra-funny in the Mediapost article is this;

"One commenter from Inside Facebook echoes my sentiment. ....." - yes, they used facebook to research the facebook hate. Irony, anyone?

Bill wanted to know my take on the 2 girls 1 cup thing (great Bill, now I'll be slammed in the SEO dunce corner too) - if I had anything to add from the perspective of momhood. and in particular mom-to-another-female. I'll sum up by copy-pasting my last paragraph:

...I think I'm rather more bothered with a brand using a teenagers social media page as advertising space in this sneaky fashion that the actual message (mortifying as it is for her). As a joke, I can see that there is funny in it (who on earth is peckish after 2 girls 1 cup) - but when it is used by a brand at large as Dr Pepper and on the status update of a 14-year old girl, we've left soft-drink Kansas too far behind IMHO. YMMV.

Trying to catch the cool of teh intarwebs is a tricky thing. Don't forget we can mold it (example: Old Spice.)