Sierra Mist Fails On Evite

This past holiday season, I was all over evite.com, responding to numerous parties and creating my own little modest get-togethers. While on the site, I noticed a very intriguing promotion for the new Sierra Mist Natural and, unlike my usual "pass on a banner ad" behavior, I clicked on through to the other side.

I was directed to a fairly well done Sierra Mist Natural landing page that allowed me to learn about the new product line and find out what exactly a "natural" soda is. While I was impressed with the simplicity, ease of use and none existent push to buy, buy, buy messaging of the page, once I espied the right hand side social media "wall," I immediately put my head in my hands and screamed "Holy FAIL!!!" You'll understand my reaction once you take a closer look at the Wall.

After witnessing this in market, social media fail, I have two pieces of advice for marketers who want to incorporate social media into their landing pages.

1) Make sure it works. There's nothing more disappointing and cringe-worth, not to mention wasteful of time, money and effort, then launching a social media module and having weird code pull through. Sorry but [object Object] just isn't going to get visitors to "like" your product or share it with their friends.

2) Part of your social media strategy needs to involve some public relations and outreach. While it's perfectly acceptable for you to like your own product, if you're the only "person" liking it, it's just sad and suspect. Before launching, reach out to people (Sierra Mist sister brands, ad agency co-workers, natural food bloggers, soda enthusiasts, etc.) and pitch them on liking your product. These efforts should be done before launch (so you can pre-populate your wall with their comments/likes), and during the campaign (so your wall can grow).