Honda’s Social Media Nightmare

September 7, 2009 at 1:03 pm

Can you imagine launching a Facebook fan page only to greet negative feedback?

This is what recently happened to Honda when they were attempting to promote the new 2010 Honda Crossover. Honda posted photos of the new vehicle and four thousand people instantly signed up as “fans” and began to trash the vehicle on grounds of poor design. Shortly thereafter, Twitter began to blow up with similar negative activity regarding the Crossover.

A nightmare for any marketing department! Honda tried to move on damage control as soon as they noticed it was getting out of control.

Apparently, a Honda employee attempted to mitigate by posting positive comments without identifying his relationship or employer was the task man. He was quickly outsted as a rat and Honda pulled his comments from the page.

Honda’s next action at damage control was the blame game. “The two studio photos we posted didn’t give you enough detail, nor were they the best to show case the vehicle. There are more photos on the way. Maybe it’s like a bad yearbook photo or something, and we think the new photos will clear things up.”

This attempt was shortsighted and is now another mockery on blogs and forums…seems they can’t win!

Honda’s attempt to control this situation has only backfired. It appears they are being to defensive, and didn’t do enough marketing research to begin with. If the car is not appreciated by the customers…who is going to buy it? Lackluster to say the least…

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