We\u2019ve waited a long time\u00a0for this day. Finally, a sauce brand has made a social media\u00a0faux pas. It\u2019s not every day we can blog about pasta sauce, but when we can it tastes good. Overly processed, would survive nuclear winter, tomato-like sauce kind of good.<\/p>\n
Wait, what? We\u2019re blogging about pasta sauce? Yes because we want you to learn from their mistakes \u2026so you don\u2019t\u00a0stir up<\/em>\u00a0the same ill will from the web. And any day we can make sauce-related puns is a good day. We\u2019ll try for some more, keep reading.<\/p>\n So say you\u2019re Ragu (or their agency) and you decide it\u2019s time to get involved in the social web. What next?<\/p>\n Uh, duh. Spam popular bloggers you have zero connection with to check out your super awesome videos, of course!<\/p>\n Ragu sauce, which lets you follow the time-honored tradition of cutting corners in the kitchen by skipping the creative process of making your own, fresh-tasting sauce applied this shortcut to their social web efforts. Unfortunately, Ragu doesn\u2019t understand that blogger\u00a0relations<\/em>\u00a0is just that.\u00a0Relations.<\/p>\n Their first artificially-flavored\u2122 interactions with dad bloggers included spam Tweets which looked like this:<\/p>\n <\/p>\n What did they link to?\u00a0This video, which basically insulted everyone they linked to and\u00a0opened the can<\/em>\u00a0of worms:<\/p>\n <\/p>\n What did they earn from their spamming? A slew of negative posts, including this one from C.C. Chapman with the title:\u00a0Ragu Hates Dads.<\/p>\n This bit from C.C. says it all about how Ragu\u2019s actions affected him as a dad and how the brand misunderstands their audience:<\/p>\n As the person in my household who does\u00a0all<\/strong>\u00a0of the shopping and\u00a0all<\/strong>\u00a0of the cooking I took offense to this video. Implying that dads can only cook the simple things and Ragu is somehow going to help make that easier. Give me a break!<\/p>\n I\u2019m sure there are plenty of couples out there where this might be true, but once again we have a brand who has decided to only focus on the mom side of the parenting equation and play into the stupid stereotypes that dads get pegged with all the time.<\/p>\n When will brands wake up to dads and the active role we play in our children\u2019s lives. I\u2019m sick of seeing every company that wants to have a parenting focus completely forget about the male side of the equation. I long for a brand to embrace fathers and really step up and cover both sides of parenting.<\/p>\n Ragu, you failed. You tried to be clever and you blew it. Whoever your agency is that told you this was a good idea should be fired because they are doing things for you that snake oil salesman are selling companies on every day and you\u2019ve written the check for it. You should have known better. They should have served you better.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Chris Brogan\u2019s comment\u00a0in the thread below is spot on and sums this up from a marketing perspective:<\/p>\n Now that social media is a checkbox service offered by agencies and run by the junior associates at those agencies as part of a much larger campaign wherein which the only part of social that gets done is the pushing out of meaningless link spam, I\u2019d like to offer that I think Ragu has no idea that you exist, let alone any sense of your cooking skills.<\/p>\n Their content, my friend, does not rule.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n I\u2019ll second what Chris said. Their content was amateurish and\u00a0cheesy<\/em>. Their approach spammy and\u00a0disingenuous. And contains just 20% of your daily allowance of sodium per half cup.<\/p>\n But should we expect any different? Ragu isn\u2019t actually social \u2013 in any sense of the word. I couldn\u2019t find a single\u00a0human being\u00a0<\/em>behind their social marketing efforts. Not sometimes, it is\u00a0always<\/em>\u00a0the sauce talking: Twitter, Facebook and their website:<\/p>\n <\/p>\n The only thing we can conclude is the sauce is a robot, has become sentient, or they\u2019re a faceless corporate entity. Which do you think? I\u2019m really hoping for robot. Finally: sauce by robots, for robots.\u00a0\u00a0Because there are no people here: either behind the product or marketing (you can\u2019t even find a \u201cteam\u201d page on their website).<\/p>\n But who cares about people when the sauce is fulfilling his master plan to pit Dads against Moms in the kitchen. Because \u2026their brand experts have decided\u00a0this<\/em>\u00a0is how we sell more sauce!<\/p>\n So mixed in with the mommy and contest Tweets you\u2019d expert to see for a brand like Ragu, you now have a conversation which looks something like this:<\/p>\n <\/p>\n And \u2026radio silence on Ragu\u2019s part. They didn\u2019t respond to any of it. They also didn\u2019t respond to the 220+ comments on C.C.\u2019s thread, or any of the other bloggers who wrote about it. Will they respond here?<\/p>\n We can only conclude their silence is due to one (or multiple) of the following:<\/p>\n 1. They\u00a0can\u2019t<\/em>\u00a0respond because someone up top refuses to let them be social (even though they are\u00a0using<\/em>\u00a0social channels). Basically they\u2019re hamstrung themselves and probably should have thought a bit more before taking a \u201ccheckbox approach\u201d to social media, as Chris Brogan articulates.<\/p>\n 2. They can respond but they have no idea what to say and lack crisis communications plan.<\/p>\n 3. They\u2019re clueless we\u2019re even talking about them.<\/p>\n 4. They\u2019re\u00a0waiting to think of even better sauce-related puns.<\/p>\n Either way, by participating in social but not actually willing to get involved in discussions, they\u2019re basically setting themselves up for the above situation (similar to the previous\u00a0McDonalds example\u00a0we shared). This is a potential outcome for any brand who registers a social channel but ignores users. You can\u2019t half commit.<\/p>\n But in this case, it actually has nothing to do with the product making it even more shameful. Here they are just participating to take (have people talk about them) and not give anything back or build any\u00a0real<\/em>\u00a0connections with consumers.\u00a0Actually now that I think about it, we\u2019ve given them what they asked for. We\u2019re talking about Ragu \u2013 that\u2019s what they wanted, right? Any mention is a good mention? But as Gini Dietrich wisely notes:\u00a0there is such a thing as bad PR.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" We\u2019ve waited a long time\u00a0for this day. Finally, a sauce brand has made a social media\u00a0faux pas. It\u2019s not every … <\/p>\n