Okay, so this might be a list of some of the worst digital marketing campaigns. But who can resist a Halloween related article on the day itself? And actually, some of these are actually that bad that it’s scary that A) someone thought of it and B) someone agreed to it.

#AskBG

We start off with a recent one. When British Gas raised their duel fuel prices by 9.2%, someone thought it was a good idea to hold a Twitter Q&A. Reaching out to customers via social media, showing they care and want to listen on a popular platform – sounds like a good digital marketing campaign right? Wrong.

British Gas gave customers a direct line of communication just hours after being told their energy bills would be going up by more than £100. After not giving the customers enough time to cool down (I’d still be angry a few hours after being told my bills are going up!), British Gas were on the receiving end of Tweet after Tweet from angry customers.

Susan Boyle’s Album Party

For many of you, you’ll know this campaign as #susanalbumparty. For those of you who don’t, I’ll leave you alone to think about why that is a scary digital marketing campaign...got it yet? If not, I’ll explain.

Susan Boyle was making all the wrong headlines in the run up to her album release – or rather her PR team were. The majority of the public read #susanalbumparty as #SusAnalBumParty. That’s right thanks to her PR team, Susan Boyle was inviting everyone to her anal bum party. Needless to say, the PR team rushed to use #SusanBoylesAlbumParty instead. But the damage was done, Susan Boyles Anal Bum Party is well remembered by Twitter users.

Carrie

Okay, so to finish things off. He’s one that is actually quite scary (and not in the ‘it’s so bad it’s scary’ way). To promote the remake of the film, ‘Carrie’, the production company rigged a New York coffee shop to terrify innocent customers. It’s actually quite the opposite of #AskBG and #susanalbumparty in that it’s actually very successful. It’s amassed more than 46 million views to date on YouTube and managed to get people talking about the film.

Words will never do this justice, so just watch the video.

 

By Jonathan Davies, Editor of the Digital Marketing Magazine. 

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