You are here: Home / Marketing / How Social Media failed LoneStar
September 29, 2010 By

How Social Media failed LoneStar

How Social Media failed LoneStar

The Fox TV show LoneStar, which was heavily promoted through a Social Media partnership with Klout, has been canceled after only two episodes aired. I was part of the promotion group and was sent some great promotional items. A t-shirt,  a metal popcorn can (full of popcorn), a cooler, a set of wine and beer glasses, a bottle opener and a couple of posters. Included in the promo pack was a DVD of the season premiere. The concept was simple, invite some friends over. Show the DVD, eat the popcorn, and get people to tweet, post to facebook and blog about the show.

I did my part to help the show, my review of the show is here. Given that the show was written by an Austinite (Kyle Killen), I was doubly invested in helping promote the show. At the end of the day though, Fox found that not enough people were engaged in the storyline. Not enough people cared about the characters or wanted to know what happened next.

This is a lesson that many marketers are discovering. Social Media, for all its supposed influence and ability to impact consumers through clever campaigns, and even when influencers are leveraged in a promotion, won’t bail out your product if the product is not what the consumer wants. I read at least a dozen blog posts written by others who were part of the campaign. They varied in their opinion of the show. Some loved it, some were undecided, a couple were not impressed. The word was spread.

What is interesting is that there is at least as much and possibly more chatter on Twitter about the cancellation of the show after only two episodes than there was about the launch of the show. Which proves that sometimes the story is not what the brand was thinking it would be.

The lesson here for marketers continues to be that your product or service has to be able to stand alone as a solid piece of work. Social Media can’t be used to underpin something that the consumer doesn’t want. Social Media is a method of communicating the existence, the value, even the uniqueness of your product, but it can’t make up for the failings of your product.

I'm glad you took the time to read this post.
If you enjoyed it I'm sure you'll enjoy my once a week newsletter - Did You See..? - I'll send you a few stories from around the web that cover Social, Digital and Mobile Marketing that I found useful. It's a quick but informative read

 

 

Filed Under: Marketing, Observations, Social Media Tagged With: , , , , ,
  • http://twitter.com/bostonmarketer @bostonmarketer

    Great post, but I think the title is misleading! Social media didn't fail Lonestar… Lonestar failed it's consumers in delivering a bad product, as you said. I agree with everything you've said above, but the title doesn't reflect that.

    • incslinger

      Rachel, thanks I'm glad you liked the post, if not the title :-) I perhaps used a little literary device to draw readers – i'm guilty :-)

    • http://www.wrightcreativity.com Kirsten Wright

      Definitely agree with you Rachel – social media did exactly what it was supposed to do in this situation, Lonestar didn't. But, this is a common situation in TV land (and everywhere else). They focus on promoting the heck out of something but don't worry about the actual content.

  • http://twitter.com/erinkoro @erinkoro

    I think that social "pressure" actually works in the opposite direction. I'm thinking about "Designing Women", when a letter writing campaign got a good show back on the air. Or "Arrested Development," when a social movement came too late. Even Betty White going onto Saturday Night Live after a Facebook campaign – this is the kind of "listening" all companies can leverage understand what their audience wants, likes, comes back for.

    These these examples all have one thing in common – they developed organically. While I do think that these kinds of campaigns (Klout, etc) have a definite roll, they're mostly leveraging messaging and advertising, which is social only if spread but not authentic by nature.