This Thread Really Got Away From Them

I was running social media for a small, but nationwide, retail chain. They haven’t updated their marketing in several years, and they came to me to help bring in younger consumers since their current customers tend to be retirees.

After going through six weeks of writing drafts, making edits, and getting approvals, we are finally ready to start posting — only two weeks behind schedule.

A few days after I start posting content to their channels, I get a frantic phone call.

Client: “All of the Facebook posts you’ve made need to be deleted, immediately!”

Me: “Okay, I’ll pull everything down now. What seems to be the problem? I thought everything had been approved.”

Client: “Yes, but we decided that the messaging was too off-brand. It sounds too ‘young’, and we think it might scare off our current customers.”

Me: “According to my documents, you already approved and signed off on the entire campaign several weeks ago. We’ve already started running ads on Facebook and Twitter with this messaging.”

Client: “Those ads need to stop, too. Just because we’ve approved something, it doesn’t mean we’ve read it. From now on, you need to double-check everything we approve to make sure it fits the brand outline we provided.”

The project ended a few months later when a higher-ranking manager at the client’s company contacted us to let us know that the person who hired us failed to get approval to outsource social media before signing the contract.