Komen vs. Planned Parenthood
We have told clients for years, what a powerful medium this is growing into. As of this month, 800 MILLION people use Facebook! They had 600 million last year. And Twitter has 200 Million users. That's a LOT OF CONVERSATION.
Social Media destroyed 3 decades of brand building in just 24 hours. Komen for the Cure has been rebranded.
Planned Parenthood made the announcement - and people around the world weighed in with anger, disgust, revolt and wrath! Within 24 hours, people dropped their support for Komen like a hot potato.
Within minutes, both Facebook and Twitter were swamped with pro-Planned Parenthood, anti-Komen comments. At one point last night, Kivi Miller did a quick count and found the ratio of anti-Komen’s decision to pro-Komen’s decision to be about 80 to 1 on Twitter.
Their mission blow up aside, they completely failed to understand how the Internet works, how news spreads, how a news cycle works, and the political climate.
(That's another whole story! The left side - Democrats - are using Social Media at high speed! Speaking out about the Republican's hourly! You have to admit, the Republicans have no one solid this year!)
But back to our story - Komen knew they planned to make this decision for almost 1 year. Their first mistake was they didn’t break the news, Planned Parenthood did with a press release. So right from the beginning they were not in control of the story. The story contained within the press release spread like wildfire on twitter, Facebook, and on listservs of activists.
And there’s absolutely nothing Komen can do to stop the story now. Even if they were to announce that the people responsible for the decision had been fired and the funds were being restored there’s plenty to keep going. And a door has been opened for all sorts of activism that wouldn’t have made an impact just 72 hours ago. New dimensions to this story will surface on their own, or activists will take action to keep the story going.
At the end of all this, whenever that comes, Komen will be a completely different organization. By changing their mission and stepping into a political debate unprepared, they will have had their future written for them by others.
We live in a transparent world people!
Posted by derrick sorles at 2/3/2012 8:08 AM 
Categories: Facts and Myths, News and Events, Interesting data, Social Media
Categories: Facts and Myths, News and Events, Interesting data, Social Media
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