Think Fast with Quick Fingers

If marketing is the Wild Kingdom, social media is the cheetah. Posts are published at a rapid-fire pace, and if marketing departments can’t keep up they’ll find they are being eaten rather than climbing the food chain.

Where does a lobster sit in the circle of social media life? Well…

Red Lobster Gets a Gift from Beyonce

If you’ve been living under a rock, you didn’t realize Beyonce released a new single last week titled, “Formation.” Fans everywhere listened and reacted with immediacy, and it didn’t take long for them to hear her give a shout-out to a well-known restaurant chain when she declared she’d take a man there for dinner after sex. (Hey, who doesn’t?)

Release the cheetah (and cue the music from Lion King). For the first time ever, Red Lobster was trending on Twitter. Sounds like a perfect opportunity, right?

Lobster Limps to a Lame Response

Well…

Once the trend began, Red Lobster (probably) began to plan their response as the Twitterverse waited breathlessly (no doubt tired from the sprint of speculation). And waited. And waited some more.

Eight hours later, Red Lobster issued their own tweet: 

Had the cheetah not already been exhausted, the response would surely have brought it to a screeching halt.

Social Media Demands Speed. With Sauce.

What happened? Probably a few things.

First: the trend spawned by Beyonce occurred on a weekend, which may mean the skeleton crew for Red Lobster was on duty. But let’s assume the A-team was on task and monitoring the accounts, ready to leap into action.

Second: it happened over Super Bowl weekend. While Red Lobster might have a couple of nuggets ready to tweet, there was likely no real connection between the seafood restaurant and #SB50. Being ready to fire on all eight cylinders was probably not on the radar.

Third: the social media team, once put into action, needed to formulate and post a response to a rather risque tweet by a social media monolith. Even if the social marketer on duty had come up with a stellar post, had they published it without corporate approval they might have been fired regardless of the outcome. The likelihood is that corporate and legal minds had to be consulted - on Super Bowl weekend - to ensure the response was approved and “safe.”

The delay in Red Lobster’s response was already problematic, but a witty reply could have saved the day. Alas, such was not the case and Twitter was left deeply dissatisfied with what was fed to them.

In the end, Beyonce bumped Red Lobster’s sales by 33%. Such is the circle of life, and Red Lobster has since started using the hashtag #lobsterworthy in their marketing. Perhaps they've got a chance in the food chain.