Air New Zealand grounded by SMOG

The dreaded SMOG (Social Media Own Goal) affliction seems to have struck Air New Zealand; over at Roarprawn Brunette blogs:

We saw a deal from Airnz via facebook a couple of days ago - its was touted as a fantastic deal that would only be accessed via a FB page for on hour on june 6

so we duly, along with thousands of others clicked at 7pm and the site crashed. then as Airnz scrambled to fix the problem they gave everyone the wrong code to access the deal. By all accounts ( we never managed to access it ) the deal was not that great anyway.

Al that would have been bad but the amazing thing was how fast people went feral.

Tens of thousands of people were seriously pissed off - pissed off to create an anti Airnz facebook page (450 followers in the half hour following the close of the deal) - and two tui billboards..

Will be interesting to see what AirNZ does to clean this mess up - also shows what an ugly beast social media can be. Its a cheetah on P.

Oh dear. So SMOG's aren't restricted to the politicians; the national carrier has scored one.

Air New Zealand has become adept at using social media. Its safety videos are all over YouTube, and its furry creation Rico regularly posts on Facebook. It made sense for the airline to try and extend its marketing via the various social media.

But Air New Zealand's big mistake was to over-promise and under-deliver, and its marketing folk should have realised how quickly things can go feral online. We're sure that they will take a few learnings (or lessons, for those who don't like the other word!) from last night's events.

Still, as WhaleOil notes, it wasn't all bad for Air New Zealand; they could be JetStar!