On Tuesday night, during Republican rebuttal address to the State of The Union speech given by President Barack Obama, Florida Senator Marco Rubio reached for a bottle of water in the middle of his speech creating a tsunami of social media comments such as #watergate on Twitter, etc. This is not a comment on either speech or the manner in which Senator Rubio ducked off camera quickly to take a sip and put the water back on the table close by.
We do however want to comment on the length of time it took Poland Springs to react to this flood of free publicity. It took the 167 year old bottled water company 14 hours to come up with a social media response. In social media time that’s closer to 14 months. They posted a small picture on Facebook of the small bottle of water reflecting in the mirror about its cameo on television. We can find nothing on Twitter or Pinterest to even 20 hours later.
Contrast that to how Tide, Oreo, and a handful of other brands quickly reacted during the 35 minute blackout at the New Orleans Superdome during Super Bowl XLVII a few weeks ago. Oreo’s Power Out? You can still dunk in the dark was retweeted over 16,000 times.
Poland Spring is not a small company. They sell bottled water in stores across the country from their headquarters in Maine, including such giant chains as Target. They missed a once in a lifetime opportunity on Wednesday to take advantage of their brief free nationwide appearance on TV.
What lessons can be learned from this? For starters, social media isn’t just a play thing or a way to kill time. Social media can be a terrific way to capitalize on the moment. Who does your social media? You and your company should have a plan in place to be able to react quickly when opportunities like this strike. Are you ready to take advantage of an opportunity like this to promote your company at a moments notice?
