Murphy Goode, a Sonoma County winery, set up a promotion that looks great on paper:

We want to hire a social media whiz (your title will be “Murphy-Goode Wine Country Lifestyle Correspondent”) who will report on the cool lifestyle of Sonoma County Wine Country and, of course, tell people what you’re learning about winemaking.
Did we mention that the compensation was $10,000 per month Plus accommodations in a beautiful home in picturesque Healdsburg, a popular vacation destination in our neck of the woods. Working hours are flexible. And all you have to do is experience wine and good living, and then tell people about it.

MG then set about having candidates publicly apply.   The whole world was invited to vote on potential candidates.   The campaign seemed to be doing well in terms of attention and media and candidate interest.   Then yesterday Twitter lit up.  Not Good(e).  Bad.  Apparently the top vote getter by a 2:1 margin (@martinsargent) wasn’t included in their first cut of 50 candidates.   Voters felt robbed – and said some nasty things…

It is hard to get clear about what actually happened.  I didn’t call Murphy Goode and their website isn’t very helpful in helping understand the terms and conditions of their selection process.  What is interesting to me is how yet again, if the general circumstances are accurate, this whole situation could have been avoided so easily.  The operative word in the term social media is “social.”  When you get engaged in social media you need to abide by a simple social contract.  A contract that is so simple in fact that many people engaged in the complexity of business tend to overlook it.   What is this divine mystery?

Respect people’s time and attention the same way you would if you actually knew them in a social context.

People feel cheated because Murphy Goode asked for their time and attention – solicited their opinion – then seemed to ignore the overwhelming majority of opinion.   Boil this down to a social context.   Would you have a few friends spend a lot of time debating and then voting on which movie to see and then ignore the major vote-getter completely?   I don’t think so.   Remember, the stakes weren’t even as high as a movie here.  This was the top 50 — not the  final winner.

So where next for Murphy Goode?   Will this damage the campaign or their brand in any significant way?

I don’t think so.

The Social Media crowd tends to see itself as the center of the universe.  And gets quite giddy during any flexing of its (admittedly rather small) muscle.  It is also a pretty self-righteous group of lumpen-digerati.    I don’t think this maneuver will have a major impact on the bottom line.  That said it must be a bit painful and surprising to those at Murphy Goode.  I am sure they are having anxious meetings over how to respond.    If they are trying to reach influencers now via this 6 month campaign many of the same people they wanted to have spread their message (social media infuencers) will either obstruct or ignore them.    Also, in the search driven world, this has the potential to generate a permanent, findable record of discontent when searching for Murphy Goode.   Mostly, this is just a simple lesson in common sense.   I suspect it will be forgotten fairly quickly – but was eminently avoidable.