I’m not impressed with Diet Coke at the moment, or the companies they choose to represent them. In a nutshell, they told me that I was one of 29 winners chosen to receive a surprise. Because of multiple mistakes on their part, I didn’t get this surprise. When I alerted them to the error, they sent me an insult.
Here was the original surprise, given to hand-picked Diet Coke fans in honor of their 29th birthday: http://twitter.com/#!/DietCokeUS/status/96935516980781056 A Diet Coke mini-fridge filled with Diet Coke. Plus a film crew to record the “surprised” people.
Despite contacting them multiple times via phone and email, I didn’t receive my surprise because “they didn’t hear from me.” You see, [oh, let's protect the not-so-innocent, shall we?] at Wieden+Kennedy told me on the phone that she is “very bad with voicemail.” And she suspects that she is unable to accept yahoo email, though she didn’t have a problem emailing me at my yahoo account and didn’t mention that in the email. I explained to her what happened, sent screenshots and the original emails, and she sympathized and apologized. She said she was sending another surprise. I waited patiently, because hey, we all make mistakes.
Well, I got my surprise today. http://twitter.com/#!/DietCokeGeekGal/status/101074616755298304
12 sodas. Well, I sure was surprised. Also incredibly unimpressed. I used to work for a marketing company that handled sweepstakes, and I remember the employees scrambling to get in touch with people. Due diligence, they called it. It was important. Apparently not to Wieden+Kennedy.
To be clear, I never asked for a reward. I didn’t reach out to them, they reached out to me.
http://twitter.com/#!/DietCokeUS/status/91622326680043521
I DMed them right away, and received an email from them on July 15th. I responded the same day, naturally. I was ecstatic.
When Wieden+Kennedy didn’t hear back from me, they could have tweeted me again. They could have DMed me. They could have emailed me again, alerting me to the fact that they’d never heard a response to their first email.
No, I didn’t ask for a reward for 3 years of free advertising. But I also didn’t ask for a slap in the face, and for some reason, that seems to be what I’ve gotten.
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Edit: This story does have a happy ending. Check it out here.
Wow, what a complete fucking PR disaster this is for them. I’m glad you’re spreading this story on Twitter and especially mentioning the names of the specific lameoids involved, because they deserve to be publicly shamed for the way they treated you.
As I’ve noted to you before, I’m firmly a Wild Cherry Diet Pepsi gal anyway, but now whenever I see anyone drinking Diet Coke, I’m going to tell them what happened to you and hence exactly what kind of company they’re supporting by buying their product.
You go girl!!
{{hugs}}