Home Social Business Nickelodeon: A Quick Case Study On Social Business
Nickelodeon: A Quick Case Study On Social Business
September 4, 2012 7 Comments

Nickelodeon: A Quick Case Study On Social Business

I am not the type of guy that likes to bash a brand when they make mistakes. I am not looking for any special attention, an apology; and I certainly don’t want to be labeled as the “Monday Morning Quarterback” and post emails, DMs and all that other nonsense just to make point. No, in this case, this is a great opportunity for all of us to learn.

Yesterday, a tweet crossed my stream from someone taking some serious jabs at Nickelodeon – an iconic children’s brand that I have followed for a very long time (my girls have been watching Nick Jr for years from Yo Gabba Gabba, Dora The Explorer, SpongeBob to iCarly). Some of these shows are actually enjoyable to watch, even as an adult.

I did a search on Google and there wasn’t anything official out but I did find a few sources and was able to piece together what happened. You all remember Jason Biggs right? He was the dorky kid in the American Pie series. On Twitter, he posted a series of very graphic tweets directed at Paul Ryan and Mitt Romney’s wives.  Also, according to screenshots obtained by Twitchy.com, the alleged messages in question suggest an extremely lewd sexual act involving Janna Ryan.

I went to his Twitter handle tonight and yeah, he’s pretty much a douche bag but hey … it’s a free country so I am good with him doing whatever he wants to do.

Here is where it gets a little crazy and how Nickelodeon is involved in this mess.

Biggs, who is voicing the character of Leo in the network’s new reboot of “Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles,” had his Twitter account actively promoted by the “TMNT” page on the site – a site that my girls (ages 10 & 7) often go to for some online gaming. That is a huge problem for me.  Huge! I looked and couldn’t find anything. So, I tweeted at Nickelodeon:

And kudos to the Nick team for responding quickly. Not sure why they responded to me … but whatever, I’ll take what I can get.

Turns out Nickelodeon officially responded to the controversy; and insisted that Briggs use ‘better judgment’ in public communications. Ok, so now you are asking how this is a case study on social business planning. I’ll be brief.

One element of social business is ensuring that you have proper controls in place so that you don’t make mistakes like this.  While they responded quickly, admitted that they don’t necessarily endorse the actions by Briggs and handled it pretty well; it could have been all out prevented if the marketing or brand teams are consistently communicating with whoever is managing content across Nickelodeon’s owned media channels – whether it be an agency, intern or whoever. Spending a little time and coin in research may also help.

We have seen incident after incident after incident (Chrysler, Kenneth Cole, Ragu) where brands are exercising very little care and/or strategic planning in what they are posting in social media. Content is so much more than celebrity endorsements or getting an influencer to RT a promotion.  Content changes behavior, in some cases it’s behavior that will benefit the brand/company and in other cases it can hurt the brand (fyi: conservative groups are asking Nickelodeon advertisers to boycott the station). Whether you agree with this or not, (and I don’t care where you stand politically so don’t tell me) you do not want your brand in the middle of this mess.

One way to prevent this madness is to operationalize your content marketing strategy – from content creation, to content approval and then to content distribution. Deploying a simple process workflow like below is all it takes. It’s not that difficult.

 

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About Michael Brito

Michael Brito is a Senior Vice President of Social Business Planning at Edelman Digital. He helps his clients transform their organizations to be more open, collaborative and socially proficient; with the end result of creating shared value with employees, partners and customers. Prior to Edelman, Michael worked for Intel and Hewlett Packard in various social media marketing roles. Opinions posted here are his own.

Feel free to follow him on Twitter, subscribe to this blog or read some more of his content on Social Business News.

  • http://www.dannyd.me/profiles Danny Denhard

    Its great they responded so quickly (especially directly to you) and disconnected themselves with Jason – many companies do not have the right operational social business processes to ensure they know what is happening and who is connected to their brand.
    My personal prediction – 2013 will be a year of advanced monitoring, enhanced interaction and brand related engagement to be pushed back onto controlled websites and rewarding engagers for this.

  • http://MariaAguilar.ca Maria Aguilar

    Great Post. You’re right to say, “It’s not that difficult.” But preventative measures aside, I would have thought they had an agreement with Biggs about including his Twitter account in their promotions. Or, perhaps not include it at all since these types of tweets seem to be the norm for him.

  • http://twitter.com/freighter Marty Thompson

    Hi Michael,
    Thanks for talking about this. I am not sure we’ll ever, or should, get to the point where corporate America literally controls speech, even when it is objectionable, or coming from an employee. I think part of the whole notion related to social business is that organizations learn from the experience, as much as they attempt to drive it. Getting to that magic place where every employee is the perfect ambassador, every person is interconnected, and deriving business value from it, takes hard work. And part of the work is in being socially responsible. So, kudos to the Nickelodeon team. And to you.
    Marty

  • http://www.britopian.com Michael Brito

    @dannydenhard:disqus i agree man. You would think that they would already be there with the right technology, process and manpower to manage situations like this.

  • http://www.britopian.com Michael Brito

    Thank you @mariaaguilarca:disqus appreciate the kind words and I agree with you 100%. His stream is filled with questionable content and you would think that someone reviewed it.

  • http://www.britopian.com Michael Brito

    Thank you @twitter-16221123:disqus .. maybe this will catapult them into thinking more strategically about content, marketing, processes, etc.

  • http://www.brunogebarski.com/ Bruno Pierre Gebarski

    Thanks Michael: Yes you are right well planned and relevant content comes from a team with some sort of a family spirit representing a philosophy or better a culture (Zappos) or message, which in turn backs up the brand to make it’s message representative and not a public embarrassment especially with the social media disaster potential! It is impossible to suddenly create a company culture when a twit is “revealing” but there is plenty of time before in making the time to establish a company culture, which in turn will influence the whole marketing content strategy regardless of company size or / and product!!