PepsiCo. Social media marketing guru Bonin Bough spend a lot of time talking about what's been good about the soft drink marketer's social media efforts to date, but asked by an OMMA Social attendee
to share what has gone wrong, Bough put his former PR hat on and did a masterful job of spin control.
"We faced our share of bumps," he said, quickly shifting his response to something that
has universally been viewed as a success: Pepsi's ground-breaking "Refresh" campaign.
On the first day of the campaign, Bough said PepsiCo's social marketing team was aghast to see that
influential tech industry blog TechCrunch put some negative spin on the effort with a story headlined: "Social Media Gone Awry."
Bough said the PepsiCo team immediately jumped on the story,
and got TechCrunch to reposition it, but he said it ultimately was a good learning experience for the company.
"What we've been able to do, more than mitigate it, is to get the organization
not to be afraid to take risks," he said.
The infamous TechCrunch Headline (circa Jan. 13, 2010).