‘You forgot to check the new product name on UrbanDicitonary.com?!’ and 3 more spooky marketing tales

In today’s real-time, fully connected environment, marketing can be scary. Heck, marketers can be scary. Some wear scarves and beanie caps in summer – and never sweat! Others memorize “Mad Men” verbatim and get “LEVERAGE” tattooed on their shins. Ouch!!

With greater access to and from customers, most of us are a metaphorical cracked floorboard or black cat crossing away from going back to school to do something truly noble, like becoming a social worker or barista.

Here are a few of the spooky scenarios that keep companies and marketers up at night:

• You forgot to vet your new product name on Urban Dictionary?!
  I won’t run down the list of terms that anyone from the most chaste to the most heathen of us would never guess are considered slang for highly acrobatic, potentially impossible bedroom shenanigans that may or may not have ever happened. We all remember the ill-fated, poorly researched Sanchez vacuum cleaner line…
  
• Your social media manager thinks he’s posting from her personal account. At Mardi Gras.
  On the bright side, your company is now being followed by Ken’s Plastic Bead Emporium. And Ken just favorited your photo. Yay…
  
• A disgruntled former engineer left some Easter Eggs in your enterprise software tools.
  And by “Easter Eggs,” we mean that every time clients log into their portal, a half kitten / half Dustin Diamond creature skateboards in GIF form across their dashboard. And all your client service managers are at a bowling offsite. Quick, deploy a hastily produced apology email campaign before your competitors are high-fiving over Tweeted screen captures!
  
• You ticked off Google.
  Maybe it was for stuffing all those keywords in random spots around the site. Or retribution for giving Bing that case study. Who knows. But now you’re getting less traffic than the Branson, Missouri Hot Topic.

Happy Halloween. And if something scary happens to your marketing this Halloween, who you gonna call? Ghostbusters? No, consultants. Again.

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