A bad example of Social Media: Chase Community Giving

"Solidarity selfish." It is a new concept that has been coined in recent days in the U.S. blogosphere The manager, JPMorgan Chase and an ambitious social marketing campaign designed to spread Facebook five million dollars in a hundred NGOs. What could have been an interesting case of using social networks to promote the work of thousands of small organizations has become a nightmare for the bank's reputation. Why? simple lack of transparency.

Community Giving Chase is the campaign that the U.S. bank launched on 15 November on Facebook, with a mechanical rather simple: the participants (nonprofit organizations) are integrated in the application of Chase and request a vote of fans, friends, acquaintances, etc. to form part of the selected initial group of 100 entities that receive $ 25,000.

This is the first phase. We have already released hundreds of NGOs that receive the first prize and can continue playing with in the second phase to get the "Gordo": 1 MILLION DOLLARS. How? From January 8 will have to tell their "Big Idea" to spend that million, and 15 to 22 January, the users will have to vote again. The more votes that have carried one million, the next five, $ 100,000.

The problem comes when three days before the vote that ended the first phase, participants no longer had information on the number of votes accrued. Three of the organizations participating in the contest, they say, were in the first position, the Top100 disappear when the final results are published. The affected subjects working in "sensitive" to say arbitrarily been eliminated.

The theme explodes in the blogosphere and dozens of powerful bloggers denounced the lack of transparency. Nathaniel Whittemore, one of the most influential players in the "Social Media Social" write an open letter to Chase, in which, besides calling on all offers some of the keys to not retake them (create a public list of voting, for example) and calls for Pepsi, which has removed its advertising on the Superbowl also mounting a campaign of social marketing on the Internet, not make the same mistake.

The final crisis comes when the New York Times also echoes the subject and shows clearly the lack of transparency of the contest and the communication policy of the Chase. At the same time, one of the entities concerned, is launching a boycott action and other prominent bloggers start talking about "Selfish giving".

No matter what page of the Community Giving Chase has more than 1 million fans (raised through various NGOs), what matters is that the organization of the event has failed: it has made clear the game from the beginning, has betrayed the trust of NGOs and their fans and this has meant a number of critical media and blogs.

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José Antonio Ritoré works Obra Social Caja Madrid managing the corporate portal and to energize and positioning. You can follow him through his blog "The rule of William" and his Twitter.