Be Careful What You Promise on Facebook
Tags: facebook, PR Crisis, Social Media Promotion, Timothy's Coffee
When you promise a free anything on Facebook, you better be prepared for it to go viral and for a lot of consumer attention. When you are not prepared, it will bite you in the butt in a big way.
Just like it did for Toronto-based Timothy’s Coffee.
We are a fan of these K-cups at our office. We have three boxes of Timothy’s Coffee in our office right now and we make coffee orders at least twice a month. So if we would have known Timothy’s Coffee was offering a free 24-pack box to anyone who ‘liked’ its Facebook page last month, we would have been all over it. But luckily for Timothy’s, we weren’t. Because just three days after the promotion, Timothy’s stock of coffee was depleted.
Timothy’s Coffee at first handled the problem well. They communicated with those who had entered the promotion to tell them not to worry, their coffee was on its way. And then radio silence. The company waited until January 4th to tell everyone that, “Oh wait, the promotion was first come, first serve.” Oh no they didn’t.
That did not go over well, as you can imagine. They got some angry posts, prompting an apology on January 13 and a video that informed customers that anyone who had signed up for the promotion would get a coupon for a free 12-pack box.
The problem that I have is not that they ran out of coffee. The two problems I have are this:
1. ‘While Supplies Last.’ This doesn’t work for me on social media. I much prefer something tangible, like ‘first 1,000 responders.’ How many supplies do you have? For a more in-depth contest where I have to fill something out, do I want to waste my time if your ‘supplies’ are ten products? By giving people a solid number of items you are giving away, they are much less likely to feel cheated if they don’t get one.
2. The amount of time it took them to respond. I get it, it was over the holidays. But the longer you wait to communicate, the more angry people get. If they would have just apologized early on and given away the coupons sooner, they might have avoided this whole mess.