Honesty is the ONLY policy

One of the key elements in social marketing is encouraging open and honest conversation with consumers. Any attempts to secretly fool them or control a message will cause a great deal of harm. Marketers need to understand that consumers who get involved in social media are talkers. Try to pull a fast one on them and they'll be spreading the word like wild-fire, which can ultimately leave you in a worse situation than where you started.

Let's talk about Nissan and their Hypercube contest, developed by Cap C.

The idea behind this campaign was to leverage social media to create buzz around the new Nissan Cube by hosting an online contest that asked participants to use various social media outlets to show their creativity for a chance to win one of 50 Cubes.

You have to hand it to both Nissan and Cap C - they took a huge leap of faith creating this type of campaign when the auto industry was at an all time low and social media still remains a relatively new and misunderstood marketing space.

On the other hand, some scandal in the judging practices landed them in hot water with several contestants who believed the contest was rigged, which ultimately lead to some negative buzz.

Without wanting to go into all the detail, I will say that in my opinion, neither Nissan nor Cap C intended any foul play and have taken reasonable steps to reach out to disenchanted participants.

That said, this is a good lesson in the potential dangers of social media. ALWAYS be honest with consumers. If they're saying something you don't like, the best thing to do is engage them and find out why they're upset and try to fix it. If you brush it off or ignore it, your efforts will backfire on you.

You can read more about the aftermath of this campaign by checking out this article in Marketing mag.