What Should Sports Legends Challenge Do Now? (or “How Do You Recover From Complete and Total Social Media Disaster?”)
Last month, I laid out the massive unethical social media and online community marketing campaign being executed by Sports Legends Challenge, an upcoming poker tournament that has major athletes (like Jim Brown, Joe Namath, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Troy Aikman and Tony Hawk) and sponsors (like JetBlue, Fox Sports Radio and the Visa Black Card) associated with it.
I’m not going to rehash the gory details here – please read the original post for all of the information. From spamming hundreds of forums and social sites to intimidation via Twitter and deceptive marketing – it’s all there.
Since it was published, I’ve received a lot of traffic to the post from the Atlanta area, where the company is based, including someone who was searching for my home address. I had a phone conversation with Bruce Bibbero, the CEO of the company, that was mixed at best. Though he suggested it would be investigated, I’ve heard and seen nothing of this. In fact, just the opposite. The past damage remains and new damage continues to be made. Just on Friday, I (of all people in the world – me) received an unsolicited e-mail advertisement from the company (screenshot).
So, I got to thinking. If I was Sports Legends Challenge or, better yet, I was someone that Sports Legends Challenge turned to, to clean up this mess, what would I do? For added perspective beyond my own, I reached out to a few friends who I knew would be able to provide me with valuable insight.
They are Brandon Eley, Interactive Director at Kelsey Advertising & Design, founder of online shoe retailer 2BigFeet.com and co-author of “Online Marketing Inside Out”; Jeremy Wright, CEO at digital strategy agency netmobs, co-founder of b5media and author of “Blog Marketing”; Jason Falls, principal at Social Media Explorer and Martin Reed of community management blog Community Spark and the administrator of the JustChat.co.uk, Female Forum and Soap Forum communities.