I was prompted to write about an article in Advertising Age this morning about Unilever’s foray into Social Media in China.   This article highlights various social media campaigns that Unilever is running in Asia and specifically their product launch for Ponds Age Miracle cream.

While I applaud Unilever for making the leap into Social Media Marketing and the excellent guidance they got from Ogilvy’s 360 Digital influence team it is the various comments in the article that concern me.

The comments from the Unilever brand marketers demonstrate a fundamental misunderstanding of how social media and social media marketing works.

I am afraid this successful case for a CPG brand of this scale will tip many other brands into the SMM arena or make the teams with success “social media crack addicts” wanting the same results but faster without a proper understanding of how it really works.  This can only result in unsuccessful programs and frustration leading to the ultimate downfall of social media marketing.

What if those “social media people don’t like our product?”

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