The Union uses social media to slam Goodyear Tires

One good thing that is coming from social media is that it is pushing companies to treat consumers with a higher level of respect. Days when companies can lie to us, cheat us, treat us like crap, or get away with creating crappy products are gone. A few examples we have seen lately include the infamous AOL customer service call and the Comcast technician falling asleep at a customer's house. Companies that continue to allow these things to spread through social media without managing them will clearly be caught and hung out to dry.

David Wilson points out that the United Steel Workers Union has launched a campaign against Goodyear that points out the hazards of buying tires not made by union workers. Instead of using traditional media campaigns such as commercials on TV the union has turned to social media by putting a 30-second spot on YouTube.

This is a great way to use social media for marketing campaigns. It is the type of message that creates buzz and is very effective. I expect this to cause Goodyear to take a hard second look at the workers they are using in their manufacturing plants and will probably consider working out some kind of deal with the union. I know as a consumer I don't want to buy products from a company that's cutting corners at the risk of my personal safety, and I'm guessing you probably don't either.

The campaign is also using fear, which I have noted in the past can work well for viral marketing. You can tell from reading some of the comments on the union video that it's working. It is literally instilling fear into the people who watch it, and you can bet next time they are picking out new tires for their car they will think twice before buying Goodyear tires. After all who wants to buy a product that poses a greater threat to your life when the one sitting right next to it on the shelf is safer?

This particular campaign also opens the doors for Goodyear's competitors. Will their competitors actually catch on and leverage this? I am not sure, but if they are paying attention, I am sure they will. With the kind of attention that is being paid to this video, it is a great opportunity for other tire manufacturers to post video responses, assuming their tires do not pose the same risks. If they do and they try leveraging this I am sure someone will catch on to it, call them out and create a even bigger problem then Goodyear's problem.

The main problem with successful campaigns like this one is that soon we'll be bombarded with them. How long until companies start doing this to each other? What about politics, with the elections around the corner I am sure we will be seeing social media used for a lot of mud slinging. It's eventually going to get so bad we won't be able to tell fact from fiction.

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