P&G's Social Media Experiment [Tide Loads of Hope]

[UPDATE:  Read David Armano's inside account; AdAge's report]

A funny thing happened last night.  P&G - as part of a private digital night in Cincinnati - turned to some of the most well-known names in social media to accomplish a few things [all but #1 are speculation only]:

1. Raise money for their charity, Tide Loads of Hope [clean clothes to families in need of support after natural disasters]

2. Demonstrate the power of social media to senior executives
3. Self-promotion
4. Ingratiate themselves with the social media who's-who [a proactive insurance policy]

What did they do?
For a few hours, several teams - led by different cewebrities hunkered down at P&G headquarters - bombarded Digg, blogs, Twitter, MySpace, YouTube, Facebook and more with links to Tide's web site where you could buy vintage looking Tide t-shirts.  Twitter was particularly insane, with #pgdigital appearing non-stop.

How did they do?

1. According to one participant, $50K in four hours, with P&G matching $50K.  I don't care how deep P&G's coffers are, they should be commended for the match.  Bravo!

2. I'm sure this experiment went a long way towards changing some old school minds within the organization.
3. Tide's name was all over the Internet last night, and I'm sure it will be written about a lot today.  The thing to watch for today is backlash, which you saw starting last night and I'm sure Tide knew was inevitable. 
4. All the usual social media suspects were virtually tripping over themselves to help promote this.  But come on, who doesn't want to be in P&G's good graces [and help raise money]?

Questions

Did you participate [disclosure: I purchased a shirt]?  Either way, what do you think of the excercise?

Did you think the external agency participants at P&G last night went far enough to disclose their relationship with the company?  I saw a video from Ian Schafer of Deep Focus (@ischafer) who was very clear to state his agency did not work for P&G.  But I didn't see that same transparency from others.  Maybe I missed it in the frenzy?

Do you think, as Brian Morrissey, Digital Editor at Adweek seems to based on his tweets below, that we were all played?

Comments

[Tom Cunniff]

Good summary. I participated (now the happy owner of a green Tide shirt and a blue one) and thought it was great.

I think the participants I was following did a fine job of disclosure. And, I don't think anybody got "played": cause-related marketing wasn't exactly invented last night. IMO, cause-related marketing is one of the killer apps (maybe even THE killer app) for social media. Much easier to rally around a cause than a box.

All in all, I think everybody wins. The charity gets money. P&G gets some valuable learning. People who wanted to play along get shirts.

And perhaps most importantly, we can all stop talking about Skittles :-)

[Ian]

@Tom: Hallelujah about the point on skittles! ;)

Thanks for your comment and visit.

[Gerard]

I found the whole affair to be pretty shameful. Tide/P&G need to spend less time co-opting social media with stunts and more time on actually engaging in conversation and building an honest social media profile.

http://www.gerardbabitts.com/2009/03/12/how-proctor-gamble-duped-social-media/

[Spanish Translation Services]

I posted your article to my myspace profile.

Regards
Tammy

[order viagra]

Cincinnati is home to major sports teams including the Cincinnati Reds and the Cincinnati Bengals, as well as events like the Cincinnati Masters, the Ohio Valley Jazz Festival and the Thanksgiving Day race.

[lacoste polos]

I participated and thought it was great

[ralph lauren polo sport]

ye,me too