We noticed a fantastic post on Facebook last night. One which wasn’t particularly interesting, exciting, or captivating, yet virtually went viral overnight.
The company responsible for the post was Target, who shared a funny error that was made on the cover of their latest catalogue. They had noticed the oddity earlier in the day, and decided to upload it to the internet. Perhaps for a bit of fun, perhaps for damage control. See if you can spot the error:
Traditionally in the past, when a business noticed an error in design work, they’d be fuming, giving the designers and proof readers etc. endless grief. These days though, with the power of social media at their fingertips, businesses can use bloopers such as this to their advantage. Rather than being the laughing stock of those who noticed the mistake, they can now leverage the hype to get people talking about their brand or products, and also showing more brand personality. The post had over 4,000 ‘likes’ and had been shared over 850 times in the 24 hours since being uploaded.
To put this in perspective, Target’s next most successful posts were a flashback photo showing a lolly stand from the 80’s or 90’s which received a touch over 760 ‘likes’ from people reliving fond memories, and for ‘shares’ an image advertising a competition to find children to be “Little Stars” was shared roughly 150 times. Ask yourself this question. How many times have you looked at a Target catalogue online? Or even just an image of one? We’ve never taken the time to do this, yet now we have, along with thousands of other people. Maybe they did it on purpose! Have you seen any good examples of other companies who’ve leveraged their mistakes?
