Amp up before you score - or think before you use social media

OK, picture the scene. You are a male in your mid-20s. You're in a bar packed with beautiful women, and you have one thing on your mind. How do you increase your chances of 'success'? That's right: turn to family brand Pepsi, who have sanctioned an incredible piece of social media marketing, built around an iPhone app.

The application - available now free from an AppStore near you - offers advice on how to 'score' by way of promoting its spin-off beverage, Amp. "Amp up before you score" is the line behind this amazingly insensitive marketing idea.

OK, so it's harmless fun, right? And it's aimed at a demographic that would relate to this kind of messaging? Really? How about the fact that the app divides women into a number of categories, including "Married". Click further into this category and you are given lines that might be used in furthering your cause with said married woman. And, just in case they work, there is a further link that takes you to - wait for it - motels in your area that you might wish to use.

Now, I'm no prude. But what were they thinking as they sat around a boardroom table and came up with the idea?

But a wider question, more poignant to readers of this blog, is what does this mean to B2B marketers? The inference is clear - social media is incredibly powerful; but it cuts both ways. Just because a message is aimed at a certain part of the target audience, we cannot guarantee that it won't leak to others. We no longer control its distribution. Social media has a life of its own and bad news spreads fast. The Buyersphere is complex and unruly and even the best social media ideas (and let's face it, this is a great idea, if a very risky one) have to be carefully thought through.

Maybe I've got this wrong. Maybe this will ultimately cause a huge increase in Amp sales that outweighs any minor damage done to the brand. Maybe most women will remain blissfully unaware of the campaign - and maybe even pleasantly surprised at the improvement in quality of chat-up lines on a Friday night. But then I heard of this through social media channels (Jezebel.com and the Hobson & Holtz podcast to name a couple), and others are learning about it by the same route, and will be duly offended at the way it reduces them to mere 'target categories'.

Now, to give Pepsi credit, when people began talking about this, they responded and they responded well. They even created their own hashtag (#pepsifail) and engaged with people on Twitter. But you can't help wondering why they went ahead with something when they must have known that they couldn't control it.

Maybe they should have taken a bit more advice before leaping into bed with this particular idea...