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You know that one cringey thing you said years ago that still keeps you up in the middle of the night?
Well, the Yes Madam comms team is going to be tossing and turning over their most recent snafu for a while.
Read Time: 2 minutes.
In case you have no idea what we’re talking about, here’s what happened.
Yes Madam is a mobile spa service provider in India. Besides having a terrible name for a company, Yes Madam also has bad judgment when it comes to viral press campaigns.
On Monday, an email was leaked from Ashu Arora Jha, the HR & Administration Manager at Yes Madam, shown below:
As you can imagine, this did not go over well with the internet. After the email was leaked, it was picked up and reported on by nearly every publication under the sun. Fortune, Inc., The New York Post, BBC—you name it. Everyone wanted to cover the wellness startup that fired people for telling them they were unwell.
Naturally, there was a healthy amount of skepticism when the news broke.
There’s no way Yes Madam thought they could get away with this unscathed, right?
Nuh uh.
After about 24 hours, Yes Madam issued a statement that, somehow, against all odds, made everything worse.
“JK!” - Yes Madam.
I need you to close your eyes and imagine. Imagine being so unbelievably out of touch with reality that you take one of the most pressing issues plaguing professionals today—unemployment and job security—during one of the most trying times of the year and exploit it as a marketing stunt.
I know ignorance is bliss, but this seems to be purely tone-deaf.
I think most of us (at least, I hope) are on the same page about how blatantly insensitive and tactless this was, so I won’t harp on that.
But, as always, there’s a very important comms lesson to be had here.
Yes Madam went viral for this stunt - amassing hundreds of articles in top-tier publications over the course of less than 24 hours. Since the post went live, their mentions went up 283%, and the brand's reach increased by 2800%.
However, within 48 hours of the campaign going live, those trends all but returned to their baseline numbers, and all that was left was a bad taste in people’s mouths.
Businesses and individuals always daydream about going viral. But not all news is good news, and there’s definitely a right - and a wrong - way to go about it.
On the one hand, millions of people now know about a brand they previously had no idea about.
On the other hand, those millions of people, and probably a good percentage of the people who were familiar with them, to begin with - will likely never use their services (or never use them again).
This campaign had no lasting positive impact whatsoever.
The only thing that could potentially have a lasting impact was the bullying that Ashu received on her LinkedIn (we do not condone) and the backlash their social team received on Instagram. These are not the types of metrics the board wants to see.
Now more than ever, brands need to be careful about what they say and how they say it. But in the ever-ongoing quest for fame, the lines between right and wrong get blurred, leading brands down a dangerous path.
The general consumer consensus of this stunt was negative. But the media now will also raise an eyebrow anytime Yes, Madam does anything publicly. They’ll wonder if it’s a real announcement or just a stunt to get more press. That’s not what you want the media to think when you pitch them.
It’s impossible to know how every single person will receive your campaign. And frankly, sometimes it’s okay to ruffle a few feathers. But there’s a difference between being edgy and being downright disrespectful. And it’s your PR team’s job to be able to walk that line to protect your reputation. In the pursuit of attention, be careful what you wish for.
Until next time -
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