Saturday, August 14, 2010

Piperlime's Mean Social Media

I'm a fan of the online shoe and clothing company Piperlime on Facebook. I've bought a ton of shoes from them and became a fan because I thought they might post messages about sales, new styles, etc. Lately, their messages have been pretty strange.

Every day they post messages like "Yoga pants are not pants," "Every time you wear sweatpants in public a single guy leaves New York," and "No more pajamas in public." Every time they post a message like this they start a giant war between their apparent sweat pants loving and sweat pants hating fans.

I don't know what their strategy is, but the messages are pretty annoying. They have a new ad campaign with similar themes, but it seems worse here. The first rule of social media campaigns should be "Don't insult your fans."


1 comment:

trace.dominguez said...

At first, I agreed with this post, but then I thought about it all afternoon and I think I get where Piperlime's coming from. Perhaps they have too many fans. Perhaps Piperline wants to distinguish itself by cultivating those fans who are passionate about similar fashion ideas?

If you wanted to increase your strongest fans, move them from say Fan to Advocate level then you'd need to give them something to rally around, in this way they might be weeding their fan base.

I agree making fun of your fans is not the best idea, but Tommy Hilfiger once said, "I don't make my clothes for black people," and yet...

Just a thought!