Social media has exploded as an industry and changed the way businesses interact with their customers. Twitter, Facebook, and MySpace are drawing millions of people into active participation—and when you find millions of engaged people, you’ll find plenty of businesses trying to convince them to part with their money. For all the altruistic talk of companies connecting with human beings (that’s the social) the endgame is always going to be revenue (that’s the marketing).

Sometimes, however, the marketing and the social aspects fail in colossal fashion. And when that happens, we can all learn from and laugh at their mistakes. Here are six of the biggest crash-and-burns in the last 10 years of social media marketing.

1. Motrin’s Mommy Marketing Headache

Motrin thought they could capitalize on International Baby Wearing Week in 2008 with a YouTube video singing the praises of safe-for-nursing Motrin for alleviating the pains of toting a tiny tot. In other words—and this is how the mommy bloggers saw it—wearing your baby is bad for you, but Motrin is good for you. The reaction was exactly what you would expect from a mother who feels criticized by a company trying to sell drugs to her baby: explosive. Personally, we don’t find anything wrong with the ad itself. But if the core market finds it wrong, there has to be something wrong. The company should know their target market better and in this case, Motrin jumped in the social media bandwagon without really doing the due research.

The lesson: do your homework and don’t insult your customers.

2. The Big Fake RV Wal-Mart Tour

Long before the people of Wal-Mart blog (which is real), the marketing brains at Wal-Mart thought their image would be better served with a fake blog called “Wal-Marting Across America.” What was supposed to be a home-cooked, feel-good story of American folklore about a couple that toured the nation’s Wal-Marts with glee, turned into a steaming pile of bad publicity(PDF).

What we learned: Dishonesty isn’t really the second-best policy.

3. Sony’s Straight-up Frontin’, Yo!

It shouldn’t be that hard to make teenagers want to play video games. Yet Sony created a contrived blog called “All I Want for Christmas Is a PSP” all the same. The blog was supposed to be the efforts of a hip, street-talking techno-punk who just wanted his homie to get a PSP for Christmas. Because that’s what the hip kids do: start blogs to help their friends get Playstations. After engaging in arguments with the throngs of commenters who saw through the gimmick, Sony finally admitted to being nothing but a poser.

Here’s the statement Sony posted once their dirty deeds were exposed,

Busted. Nailed. Snagged. As many of you have figured out (maybe our speech was a little too funky fresh???), Peter isn’t a real hip-hop maven and this site was actually developed by Sony. Guess we were trying to be just a little too clever. From this point forward, we will just stick to making cool products, and use this site to give you nothing but the facts on the PSP.
-Sony Computer Entertainment America.

Apparently, we didn’t learn the lesson about honesty all that well. Which is especially ludicrous given the fact that the target audience was already in love with the product.

4. Wal-Martbook. Wal Space. Wal-Fail

Remember The Hub? You know, the big social media forum for teens who really love hanging out at Wal-Mart? Wait, you don’t remember? Maybe that’s because their attempt at duplicating MySpace only lasted 10 weeks. Trying to convince the youth of America to talk about how much they love Wal-Mart might be the most unlikely scenario ever dreamed up by corporate America. The fact that it got approved is a testament to the chutzpah of whoever dreamed up the idea.

When you engage in social media, at least try to look like your serving the needs of you’re customers just a little bit.

5. T-Mobile, Magenta Overlords

In 2008, T-Mobile issued a cease-and-desist notice demanding that Engadget Mobile remove the color magenta from their website and logo. They, in fact, carried a trademark on the color magenta, however putrid it may look on-screen. The blogging community responded with an enormous backlash against the cell giant with thousands of poetic magenta site badges that read: “T-Mobile Sucks.” Not the most eloquent phrasing, but it sums up the social-media awareness of the company quite nicely.

The lesson: when you go public with a petty gripe, you’ll face the wrath of the masses.

6. Dirty Dominoes

The link is NSFW, and the stuff those Domino’s Pizza employees were doing is not safe for food. What possessed two teen to videotape themselves sneezing on food and wiping sponges on their a** and then uploading the videos to YouTube? We don’t even want to guess. That’s all kinds of wrong. But here’s where Domino’s failed: they let someone else discover and promote the videos before they found it. The image below shows the “Dirty Dominoes” crew after being charged in 2009.

You can watch a collection of dirty Domino’s video here.

After finding out about the incident this is what the corporate office had to say,

Thank you for bringing these to our attention. I don’t have the words to say how repulsed I am by this – other than to say that these two individuals do not represent that 125,000 people in 60 countries who work hard every day to make good food and provide great customer service. I’ve turned this over to our security department. We will find them. There are far too many clues that will allow us to determine their location quite easily.

Regards,
Tim McIntyre
Vice President, Communications
Domino’s Pizza, LLC

Note to all: you better keep a constant eye on the Web for anything related to your company so you can squash the bombs before everyone else has seen them.

These were some of the brands that pinched the wrong nerve this past decade. We are sure there are more to come. Which one among these do you think were the dumbest?