How to Avoid An #EpicFail

It feels like every week a new brand controversy bubbles up in social media, spilling over into mainstream media. The resulting social media backlash often skews the original intent of the brand and causes lasting damage to brand engagement and reputation. This is when brands #epicfail.

But there are ways to test out ideas, concepts and campaigns before launch in order to potentially avoid a social media backlash. Research communities can offer brands a way in which to avoid an #epicfail by providing a safe space for brands.

In this paper, we take a closer look at how communities allow us to safely explore, develop and optimize ideas and communication before releasing them into the wider world, including:

• How communities mimic much of our natural social media behavior to provide clues about the larger social dynamic
• Multidimensional, qualitative and quantitative community tools and methods used for deep consumer understanding
• Examples and case studies from recent community projects around the globe