ChapStick Gets Itself in a Social Media Death Spiral – A brand’s silent war against its Facebook fans

We’re catching up on all the social media scandals today. The major one this week involves ChapStick—a brand whose marketing I don’t recall ever making any sort of impact. Until now. Here’s the play-by-play. ChapStick posts weird image on Facebook of a woman, backside in the air, looking for her ChapStick behind a couch. Blogger is disgusted, blogs about it. Blogger tries to reply on Facebook too. ChapStick deletes her comments. Others object to the image. ChapStick deletes their comments. ChapStick’s ads with the line "Be heard at Facebook.com/ChapStick" start to look foolish. People keep commenting. ChapStick keeps deleting. People get angry. ChapStick gets worried. The image isn’t even that big of a deal—it’s ChapStick’s reaction to the criticism that galls. "What asses," people say of ChapStick (get it?). People start commenting about why they can’t see their old comments. ChapStick can’t keep up with all the deleting. Comments are getting through, and they’re nasty. (People who aren’t even fans of the brand can comment nowadays, of course.) ChapStick for some weird reason doesn’t just delete the image, apologize, or even acknowledge the issue, beyond its infuriating deleting of comments. ChapStick apparently thinks the whole thing will just go away if it can silence enough of its "fans." AdWeek – Read more…​