Tide.com Social Media Case Study

Tide.com has a forums area of their website that's relatively active. No really big news there...but after reading through one particular thread about Tide Discontinuing the Simple Pleasures scented line, I had to blog about it. Essentially, this is the promise of social media. Over a period of months, a group of 45 incredibly passionate users piled up comments about this discontinued line of detergent creating a tsunami of Influence Instances. 

Right from the beginning, P&G Mandy Earnshaw (go Mandy, amazing!) was right there with them offering sympathy and alternatives. However, despite her pretty definitive early posts the community (if we can call it that) keeps building steam. No spoilers here though, you gotta' go read the thread for the cliffhanger ending. 

When you see this thread, you'll appreciate that social networking hubs - great as they are - are not the ultimate repositories for this kind of dialogue (yes, I appreciate that maybe some day the dialogue takes place in a 'destinationless' kind of way, but nevertheless). Probably not even ecommerce sites. Brand sites are. The engagement, recall & humanizing of the Tide brand from this one thread is simply off the charts. 


Kudos also to getsatisfaction who is powering the forum (coincidentally, Dave Knox mentioned getsat yesterday in a very good, even if he forgot to mention Expo, post on what great content sites should feature). As an early board member at PlanetFeedback a decade ago, this is the realization of a vision a long time in the making.