Six People Trolled Me. It Felt Like Sixty Thousand
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What is the premise of the show and who are the hosts?
This is Embracing Marketing Mistakes, the show that teaches you growth from failure. I'm Chris Norton, and every week a senior marketeur sits down with me and my colleague Will Ockenden and tells us what went wrong, what it cost them and what they would do differently. This is one of those moments, so enjoy. Just to take you back to the the the superhero mistake bit. So you you have you've had the positive side of of Twitter and then you've had the the Elon Musk side of Twitter as well. So what so what happened with the with the superhero theme that went wrong then?
Yeah, it was it was interesting because I'd I'd just like many people in the day those early days of Twitter, so this is twenty fourteen we're talking about, and um everybody was really nice and it was like I classed it as like the Facebook for business and um I wasn't on Facebook and I'm not on Facebook, but this was I was having conversations with CEOs that about running and running shoes and things that I would never in a million years have been able to talk to them about. So it was a a really friendly place, talking to customers and prospects about X Factor on a Saturday night and then having some deeper connection with them, which from a sales point of view, it takes years to build that kind of level of knowledge because people were just now
um freely and With their own permissions. Just being human. So I found I really enjoyed that part of doing business with people uh and being on Twitter for that reason. And after that first event we had the superhero theme And some of the stuff that we had in there, you know, I went uh I can't even remember, it might have been home bargains or something. I I bought like superhero pencils and 'cause we had to give a pencil or a pen and what have you. And they were these little like I think they were designed for children to be honest with you. And I put them in the swag bag and they were all bang on theme.
How did early‑day Twitter feel like a friendly space for real conversations?
They were bang on the creative. Uh and then somebody Commented afterwards. saying, Oh, it was just, you know, we went to this event and there were capes and masks and the stuff that most of the eighty odd people enjoyed. And then saying, Oh, there was loads of s this tat and stuff like that and uh what do we pay for? All that tat didn't actually make up the budget. Yeah. Because resource took the hit of that. And um my first it was the first time I'd had any negative feedback on social media. Uh so that stopped me in my tracks to be honest when I did genuinely that that turned into somebody else jumping on that bandwagon and someone else. It didn't it didn't go viral or anything. Ultimately it was six people.
Pylon. Yeah. But it felt like sixty thousand people and I thought, Oh God, I um this is not nice. I I'm gonna leave Twitter and and I spoke to a couple of CEOs that I knew who are in um who were in the social housing space and on Twitter actively and I thought, well, I've spoken to them before about them being accessible and they get trolled every day. So I thought, well let's let me actually speak to them and they gave me some really sound advice which was look, um just the best thing is to ignore it and don't get involved and try and justify yourself but also if you're getting trolled then you're visible. And you can't be visible just to the best people.
What went wrong with the superhero‑themed event and the swag bag?
You have to be visible to everyone and I went, Oh actually, I'll take that as a compliment and that I'm glad I took that advice but It was definitely everything felt like a mistake and that could have stopped this community ever eleven years on, stopped it dead in its tracks.
I mean I've been trolled. We get trolled like with the this podcast is uh I'm gonna plug it out here. We're on the on y our YouTube channel, Embracing Marketing Mistakes on YouTube. And um I we did a video, I can't remember what I did a video. I mean obviously but there's loads of video bits, right? And um I was talking to camera about something and someone put in the comments, my marketing manager flagged it to me 'cause I hadn't seen it and she was like, I oh no, I think I saw it and I said, Oh have you seen did you see this comment?
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Chapters
8 chapters
1
What is the premise of the show and who are the hosts?
0:00–1:58
2
How did early‑day Twitter feel like a friendly space for real conversations?
1:58–3:25
3
What went wrong with the superhero‑themed event and the swag bag?
3:25–4:44
4
How did the first wave of criticism (six people) feel like sixty thousand trolls?
4:44–5:47
5
What advice did senior CEOs give on handling trolling and staying visible?
5:47–7:06
6
What are other real‑world examples of online pile‑ons and how were they dealt with?
7:06–8:46
7
What broader lessons about visibility, community, and resilience does the host share?
8:46–10:15
8
How can listeners support the podcast and why is feedback important?
10:15–10:23
Speakers
1 identifiedMore from Embracing Marketing Mistakes
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