Cheesegate: It Just Won't Die

I don't usually post on Friday. But the geniuses responsible for Cheesegate refuse to shut up and just let it go away. And you know me, I'm here to help.

Let's recap our story so far:

The Players
Président Cheese - A brand of chéese
Huge - An agency
Business Insider - A tweet machine disguised as a business website
Digiday - A conference machine disguised as a business website
The Drum - "Media Brand Of The Year," whatever the fuck that means
The Ad Contrarian - Media Brand Of The Century. And a searcher after truth, piling up all kinds of clicks by milking this story well beyond its sell-by date
Social Media - Tens of millions of disagreeable people looking to make trouble

Our Story So Far
On May 24, Business Insider (hereafter known as BI) ran a puff piece by a so-called reporter singing the praises of Huge's fabulous social media expertise and particularly how "13 social-media and advertising specialists" were pressed into service to create a Twitter campaign for Président Camembert.

A clever editor at BI, sensing the gold in the story (which the clueless reporter whiffed on) titled the piece We Got A Look Inside The 45-Day Planning Process That Goes Into Creating A Single Corporate Tweet.

Soon the story went from a thinly disguised PR job to a social media nightmare as the cheese hit the fan and the story blew up all over the web's murky marketing basement.

At this point, enter Digiday. Digiday stepped in to run a piece defending the agency and implying that what was really going on was:

1. BI's story was irresponsible. 
2. The process didn't really take 45 days
3. Social media haters were licking their chops over this story and ganging up on the poor agency

Simultaneously, the agency went on a tweet-a-thon, repeating the same messages as their pals at Digiday. You can see some their tweets here.

Okay, fair enough.

Everyone had their say. We all got a few thousand extra hits to our sites; the cheese tweet finally got noticed; the agency got some publicity; and everyone had a few laughs.

But then the Donald Sterling effect reared its ugly head. You see, people who screw up have a compulsion to make things worse by trying to justify their screw-up. So here comes the agency's planning director to the rescue. He wrote a piece for The Drum which you can read here.

In the piece he did a little switcheroo and played it like the BI article claimed it had taken  45 days to write the tweet... 

"Of course it doesn't take 45 days to write a Tweet."  

The BI piece said no such thing. It made it very clear that the 45 days included creative development, planning, meetings, internal reviews, and whatever other useless bullshit the agency could bill the client for.

He then went on to defend their planning process...

"As social has grown from a discipline emerging from the sidelines into a core pillar of the wider digital landscape, it also benefits from the increased professionalism behind the approach.

Really? Here's the thing. When the fruits of your "discipline emerging from the sidelines" get zero retweets and two favorites after almost a month, maybe it's better to save the baloney about "increased professionalism behind the approach" for another day.

Next, he couldn't help taking his shots at social media's mortal enemies -- the nasty devils who aren't afraid to call social media "experts" on their bullshit.

He pointlessly quotes one commenter, "This is an example of everything wrong in the world" then takes a lame shot at traditional advertising "...in another life, I did once spend four hours in a meeting debating Captain Birdseye's tone of voice. But that was for an ad, so it's fine."

Oy.

Look, I'm hoping this story never ends because it's rare to find a story that's both a laugh riot and a click magnet. But, honestly, you don't spend time in the agency business without eventually screwing something up royally. We've all done it. Everyone understands it.

So because I love all my children, here's some free advice for the agency -- quit the whining and take your medicine.

Issue the following statement:

Sometimes process can be the enemy of progress. We've learned something from this and are streamlining everything we do.

Then do yourself a favor. Shut the fuck up.

Cheese Tweet Damage Control

Cheesegate -- the now legendary (yesterday it was only "soon-to-be-legendary") 45-Day Cheese Tweet holocaust -- is now turning into a Marx Brothers farce.

Everyone involved is tripping in their underwear trying to claim that the story in Business Insider was either false, sensationalistic, or no big deal. Anyone who even touched this thing looks like an idiot (fortunately, I'm already officially recognized as an idiot, so WTF.)

Social media has once again proven that companies wading into it are as likely to get covered in poop as glory. The agency responsible for this mess is now in full-blown damage control mode.

First, they got someone at Digiday to write an apologia claiming that Business Insider got the story all wrong.

The lead in the Digiday story went like this

"When cynicism about corporate social media accounts meets the click-hungry Web, we end up with stories like this one..."

Cynicism? Not only was the Business Insider story not cynical, it was one of the most jaw-droppingly naive and wide-eyed PR softballs ever served up to a bunch of nitwits.

If anything is cynical, it's Digiday's bitch fight with BI. First, they are apparently all light-headed and stricken with the vapors because an online site engaged in click baiting. Someone call the integrity police.

Then their article notes that the original BI story implied that 13 people were at some meeting but in reality only 4 people attended it. Big fucking deal. They use this trivial error try to undermine the credibility of the whole story.

According to Digiday, a VP at the agency said...

“Business Insider tore a page from the British tabloids, and it reflected a lot of the cynicism that people have about social media,” she said. “We can all agree it does not take 45 days to write a tweet.”

Really? Then tell us clearly, exactly how long did this thing take? You want to discredit the story, be specific. According to one of your agency people "about one-third of (the agency's) social-media posts are planned in this fashion..." Is he full of shit or is the reporter? Or are you?

But the icing on this dung-cake is the way the agency has handled it. First, they foolishly invited a reporter into the clown act that is a social media "war room" hoping they would get a little PR treasure. Instead, they got a turd sandwich.

Now they're social media-ing their little tushies off trying to de-fuse the story. Here are a couple of examples:

From the examples above, we can see that producing a tweet doesn't always seem to require...

• 45 billable days

•  a copywriter and graphic designer to brainstorm tweet ideas

• a pitch team meeting with a social media expert, a copywriter, a designer team, and a project manager.

• an internal review, where senior copywriters and strategists sign off on the work over the course of a week

Unless, of course, some dumb-ass client is paying for it.

The Soon-To-Be-Legendary 45-Day Cheese Tweet

If you're looking for a reason to throw yourself under a bus, I suggest reading We Got A Look Inside The 45-Day Planning Process That Goes Into Creating A Single Corporate Tweet at Business Insider.

It is written by someone who, I guess, is supposed to be an advertising reporter. But it's written with the clueless insouciance of a sorority girl wandering into a 9-man circle jerk.

The story goes something like this: a bunch of poor bastards are squandering their young lives in a social media "war room" creating useless nonsense while the agency milks its clients out of thousands of dollars .

Cutting to the chase here, the article tells the story of "13 social-media and advertising specialists" who took 45 days to "plan, create, approve, and publish" a tweet about cheese.

One fucking tweet -- 45 days!

Why? Because only social media specialists can be that fucking stupid.

It takes me 30 seconds to write a tweet and that's because I type with my feet.

The New York Times can publish a 50-page newspaper every fucking day of the year, but these cement-heads need 45 days to make a tweet.

Can you imagine how much money the agency made on that tweet?

I am in the WRONG FUCKING BUSINESS!

You have to read the details of this folly to appreciate the lunacy of it. According to the report, someone from the agency's social media team...

"...met with a copywriter and graphic designer to brainstorm tweet ideas for the next month. It was then that the copywriter suggested a tweet centered on the idea that Camembert, a French cheese popular during the spring, was best served at room temperature.

The copywriter and designer met the next week to create the image for the tweet, which was then pitched at a team meeting... The meeting includes (the social media genius), the copywriter, a designer team, and a project manager.

Then it's on to an internal review, where senior copywriters and strategists sign off on the work over the course of the following week. The post was then sent to Président Cheese and, some 45 days after conception, published on the internet for the world to see."

The world to see? This company has 100 followers on Twitter. My hernia scar has more followers.

And what was the result of this monumental whack-a-thon? This shining star of brilliance:

Can you imagine what this would have been like if they only had 44 days?

Here's the best part.

The tweet was posted on April 30th. As of May 24th it had zero retweets and two "favorites" (I'm guessing the Président and his mother.)

I can tweet a picture of my cat's ass and get fifty times better results. On the other hand, my cat's ass looks a lot better than this incomprehensible photo.

Remarkably, the writer for Business Insider seemed to think this astounding absurdity was admirable and praiseworthy instead of being one of the most insanely wasteful and idiotic abuses of "marketing" the world has ever seen.

Kudos to the agency for pulling off this amazing scam. And to the client, all I can say is... how generous!