Ho-pefully everyone got a good chuckle out of
St. Jude Children's Research Hospital - ALSAC
's latest card.?
On Monday, I saw a TikTok from user kaileecwalker with the title ‘my dad got this in the mail from st jude.’ As the now-deleted video quickly unfolds, we see the inside of the card says ‘ho’ instead of the intended messaging of ‘hope.’ WHOOPS. And as you might have guessed, the video spread like wildfire and the original post now has almost 10 million views. WHOOPS times 2.??
For St. Jude (and 10 million TikTok users), this post was hard to ignore. Between 4,000 comments and over 53,000 saves, there was more HO than HOPE getting passed around. Fortunately for everyone, St. Jude handled the misprint skillfully. Let’s break it down:
- Once it was clear that this initial post was going to be viewed by the masses, St. Jude jumped into the comments, acknowledging the mistake with a little dash of humor thrown in there as well.?
- The social team was not the ones who were in charge of printing and/or designing the cards, but when slip-ups happen, it’s usually on the social team to do damage control. There’s not one right way to admit to a mistake on social, but there are a million wrong ways to handle it.?
- Thankfully, St. Jude found one of the right ways – and 194,000 people agree. You can’t ignore it, you can’t blame others, and you can’t be mad at people for calling it out. All you can do is admit you’re human and move forward.?
- Did St. Jude just unlock a new marketing strategy for Gen Z? According to the comments, yes.
- While not the intention of the card, this definitely led to more awareness and more publicity for St. Jude, and good causes getting more attention is never a bad thing. They even doubled down on it with their own TikTok.
- This serves as a nice way to button up HO-gate. They understand that new followers are looking at – and following – their account, so this serves as a friendly welcome and the comments reflect that as well.?
- And lastly, I appreciate that they kept this viral TikTok moment on TikTok. They didn’t try to post this video on other platforms where it would lead to confusion, but instead, this ends up feeling like one big inside joke that St. Jude and all of TikTok is in on.?
ICYMI:
LIKE/RETWEET/SHARE/ETC?
So this is how I finally learned the difference between front-wheel drive (FWD), rear-wheel drive (RWD), and all-wheel drive (AWD). It’s possible driver’s ed classes everywhere will start showing this video, and for the sake of Van Isle Ford, I hope they do. Let’s talk about how an account with less than 10,000 followers struck gold with a video that crossed 16 million views:
- You’ve heard of
Mohawk Chevrolet
's ‘The Dealership’ series – a spoof of ‘The Office’ – now prepare yourself for Van Isle Ford’s slightly unhinged ‘Drive With Luke’ videos. The combination of silly and educational seems to be the sweet spot for car dealership TikToks and this one nails both of those things.?
- After finding success with this post, they also earned another win with a follow-up video that reached 900K views. This allowed them to squeeze as much engagement as possible out of their initial slam dunk.
- This can (and should) be a continuing series: Taking a general automotive question and explaining it in a way that is entertaining, informative, and extremely sharable.?
- People make great content every single day, but it is tough to create content that is also memorable. From comments like ‘this was actually helpful’ to ‘the explanation I’ve needed and was too embarrassed to ask’ to ‘i’ll never forget this,’ it’s clear this struck a chord and will stick in people’s heads.?
Make it work for you: Prior to this video, their best-performing post had only 7,000 views. Their earlier content was quirky and offbeat, but they hadn’t landed on a distinct style or hit until Luke Wheel Drive came around. This is TikTok in a nutshell: Throw different things at the wall and see what sticks.?
In this world you have to fight for what you want. And sometimes what you want is the Double Dough from
Jeni's Splendid Ice Creams
to be available all year long. A reasonable request if you ask me – and a guy named Alex LeCroy who made it his personal mission to make this happen. Here’s how Jeni’s doubled down on the double dough ask:
- This is how you level up your standard announcement post. The message is delivered loud and clear, but at the same time, it amps up the hype while putting a fan/follower front and center.?
- If you are like me, you might have thought to yourself, ‘well this is very creative, but it’s clearly just a stunt for social,’ well, you would be wrong. Prepare to have your faith in humanity/social media just slightly restored:
- The true test of the success of a post isn’t all in the numbers. It’s also in the comments and these comments are here for Alex. And Double Dough. But mostly Alex.?
- The high performance of this graphic bled into the success of the next one. Followers became invested in the announcement and the Alex of it all, so that when Jeni’s published the ‘real’ post the next day, the comments were still talking about Alex even though he wasn’t mentioned in the caption at all.?
- This isn’t an analysis of anything, but Jeni’s ice cream is the best ice cream and I’m going to be ordering Double Dough immediately.?
Make it work for you: If you create with your community in mind, good things will happen. Jeni’s managed to make Alex and the rest of their followers feel like they were organically part of a moment together.??
Post of the week:
