Lessons From Beyoncé’s Red Lobster Nod (& Their Failure?)

Lessons From Beyoncé’s Red Lobster Nod (& Their Failure?)

When Beyoncé surprised fans by giving Red Lobster a titillating nod in her new single “Formation,” Twitter wanted the organization to respond.

It took marketers eight hours to issue a response on the group’s Twitter feed; once they did, social media users still weren’t satisfied.

News organizations and marketing groups bashed the seafood chain on social media for not responding fast enough to her mention of a Red Lobster dinner as a reward for great sex.

Social media managers are under immense pressure to offer fast and timely responses to any mention of their brand. Often, this pressure prompts marketers to latch on to other brands’ moments of glory.

As marketers, it’s our job to promote conversations about the value of branding, preparedness and reputation management, but we should be wary of exploitation. Instead of bashing Red Lobster on Twitter, marketers should have commended the organization’s success.

Here are the facts:

• The mention generated more than 300,000 tweets about Red Lobster.
• Red Lobster trended on Twitter for the first time in the brand’s history.
• The response received more than 15,000 favorites and 14,600 retweets
• Sales saw a 33 percent spike compared with the same time last year.

Social media channels should be used for driving awareness to a brand, engaging with customers and increasing conversions, not to bully other organizations and their marketing teams.

Believe me, I get it. Beyoncé isn’t a person, she’s a movement. So understandably, those eight hours were tense, frustrating, anxiety-provoking – the struggle was real. The delay caused Queen Bey fans and celebrities to take to Twitter in anticipation, some joking while others were stressing out.

And then they responded.

This apparently wasn’t enough sass for the Twitterverse, and they reacted negatively, as they often do.

Alright, so it took them eight hours to say what Fortune called “nothing sexy,” so what?

Here’s the problem. Mainstream (reputable) media outlets immediately hopped on the opportunity to bash the company, no doubt fueling one of the worst mantras in content marketing and journalism – “you have to be fast, and timely.”

One outlet even said the response to Red Lobster’s tweet was “overwhelmingly WTF.” Seriously?

This is currently one of the biggest problems in the industry. Companies are now constantly being pressured to respond immediately and be quick to adopt “the new.” And being trained to do just that, marketers and content gurus unnecessarily capitalized on the brand’s moment of glory to give tips and lessons on “how not to pull a Red Lobster if Beyoncé boosts your brand.”

Once again, I get it. We’re marketers… part of our skillset involves finding spontaneous moments in time to promote open dialogue around the value of branding, preparedness and reputation management.

But there’s a very careful line we need to walk so as to not seem exploitative of a situation. Tell me, what exactly was positive about putting down a company that just scored a major win?

And if you don’t believe it was a major win, let’s take a look at the facts:

• The mention generated more than 300,000 tweets about Red Lobster
• Red Lobster trended on Twitter for the first time in the brand’s history
• Their response received 15K+ favorites and 14.6K retweets

But it doesn’t stop there. The company also touted a 33 percent spike in weekend sales compared to the same time last year.

Maybe this doesn’t drive home the point enough. Let’s put this into perspective, remember all the commotion around JCPenney’s mittens tweet? Beat it.

Or what about Oreo’s famous Super Bowl tweet that everyone touts as Twitter Best Practice 101? Yup, received more attention than that one too.

So tell me, what was the problem?

I’ve said this before and I’ll say it again: Social media posts, blog pieces and autoresponder emails  are not THE business; they are channels.

When done correctly, they are methods for driving awareness to a brand, engaging with customers and increasing conversions. In short, they must indirectly or directly serve as a revenue stream.

Let’s review.

1. Boost in social media activity: Check
2. Trending on Twitter during the Super Bowl: Check
3. Receive massive attention and spike conversation: Check
4. Drive organic coverage across multiple mediums: Check
5. Increase YoY sales as a result of a marketing campaign: Check

Here’s what brands CAN learn from this:

• Stay true to your brand – Red Lobster is a family brand, they are not a millennial-focused brand with sassy, quick-witted copywriting like iHop or Taco Bell.
• Focus on your KPIs – What good is a few positive tweets if they have nothing to do with your key performance indicators or your bottom line? Focus on what moves the needle and pushes the business forward.
• Don’t trust the critic, they’re the cynic – It’s journalism that should be ashamed. Red Lobster has been in decline and its sales have been down. This was a major win for the company, and the company was expressing thanks to Beyoncé with the tweet. Give them a break. All brands should consider publicly thanking the influencers that tout their brand, rather than try to once again maximize and gain more traction.

As my company said in a newsletter today, the “this needs to happen now” rhetoric being pushed by marketers and news sites that is so common among those without the real-world experience to understand long-term program structure and workflows needs to stop.

Success: only a bad thing if you can’t use social media to make everyone happy.

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