Marketing, Online Marketing

What Steve Harvey & Miss Universe Can Teach Us About Digital Marketing

By @JuanVLopez · On December 23, 2015

You’ve heard about it by now.

The memes, the vines, the tweets, the jokes…

Poor Steve Harvey made one of the biggest mistakes of his life Sunday at the Miss Universe 2015 pageant when he announced Miss Colombia (Ariadna Gutierrez) as the pageant winner…only to pop back on stage 3 minutes later an announce Miss Philippines (Pia Alonzo) as the true winner.

We can go on and on about what he should’ve done, but there are a few things us digital marketers can learn from Steve’s massive gaffe…

OWN YOUR MISTAKE

Steve had just about the perfect response after screwing up. He jumped back on stage, proclaimed his mistake and corrected the situation by announcing Miss Philippines as the real winner.

“Let me just take control of this,” Harvey said. “This is exactly what’s on the card. I take responsibility for this. It was my mistake. It was on the card. Horrible mistake. I can show it to you right here. The first runner-up is Colombia. It was my mistake. Please don’t hold it against the ladies.”

How does this apply to digital marketing?

If you’re like me, you move fast – real fast.

As much as I strive for perfection, I’ve sent out tons of emails, tweets, posts and images with minor misspellings or errors. Yes, this pales in comparison to what happened at the Miss Universe pageant, but the principle is the same – when you make a mistake, own up to it immediately, accept responsibility and move forward.

Us digital marketers pride ourselves on our work so a lot of times we try to undo our mistakes by blaming deadlines or deleting posts, but human error exists. Own it and more forward.

TWEETS ARE FOREVER

After the huge mistake, Steve decided to take more ownership of the issue – he took it to Twitter and apologized to Miss Colombia & Miss Philippines…except he misspelled the names of both countries.

Ah, Steve.

Screen Shot 2015-12-23 at 6.46.11 PM

He quickly deleted this Tweet and even though it was likely the cause of some auto-correct or simple pressured tweeting, the damage was done.

And on the internet, you can’t undo damage – tweets are FOREVER.

How does this apply to digital marketing?

One of the first lessons about Twitter I learned back in like 2007 was, “If you’re not OK with your mom tweeting it, then don’t tweet.”

This has not only made me ultra conscious of the content I tweet, but it’s made me super careful to spell everything correctly and quintuple check everything I post – no matter what kind of rush I’m under.

Digital marketers, a lot of times we rush to publish content and sometimes it’s bad – real bad. Misspellings everywhere, some sentences don’t make sense, the content is lacking…in a 24/7 world, it’s natural to want to publish things as quick as possible.

But take your time. A simple spelling error can cost you even more than the 1 minute you saved in publishing without revising.

DESIGN THINKING RULES

This is a picture of the card Steve Harvey received to go out and announce the Miss Universe winner.

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I’m sorry, but is this the best a multi-million dollar organization can do? Beautiful women strolling across a stage and working their butts off, only to have the winners card be typed up in Microsoft Word?

Wow.

How does this apply to digital marketing?

Design rules – this point was proven on Sunday.

People can make the case that Steve should have taken his time to read the card more thoroughly and that it was clear enough as is, but I guarantee you that if the design of this card was geared to make it more user-centric, Steve would not have made this mistake.

Designer Eric Thomas redesigned this beautiful sample card – something Miss Universe should really consider doing in the future.

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ALWAYS BE PREPARED TO GO VIRAL

Alright, so Steve Harvey made the biggest mistake in the world since Captain Edward Smith crashed the Titanic into an iceberg…so, what’s next?

The person who really made off as a winner in this whole situations was Miss Colombia, Ariadna Gutierrez.

Yes, something can be said about her not willingly taking the crown off when Steve announced Miss Philippines as the real winner, but that’s subjective.

What’s not subjective is how Gutierrez has handled this whole situation with humility, compassion and understanding.

She’s since posted an Instagram pic saying this was her destiny and she was embraced by the rest of the pageant losers after walking away from the main stage – she’s the world’s sweetheart for the time being.

Forbes is reporting that she’s “been offered entrance in a Las Vegas pageant free of charge and is slated to appear on an upcoming episode of Steve Harvey’s show”

The public feels terrible for her and she’s playing right along into it. She’s handling it with grace, humility and humor…and in return, is getting loads of attention. I don’t doubt her schedule will be full in 2016 with appearances, interviews and features – probably more so than Miss Philippines.

How does this apply to digital marketing?

You need to always be prepared to go viral.

There have been many studies done on the things that go viral, but there’s no formula. It can be as simple as a dumb tweet or a response to a Donald Trump speech or a video you shot on your phone – the point is, you don’t know.

BUT, if by chance that moment does come and your content is shared, re-tweeted, re-posted and re-grammed, you need to be totally ready to make the most of that opportunity.

Gutierrez has played this perfectly because now she’s in perfect position to make 2016 the best year of her life, even though it came as the result of one of the most embarrassing moments of her life.

You – you, digital marketer, you – need to be prepared to have your content go viral at any moment. How can you capitalize on that attention? How can you turn those views into bigger awareness for your brand? You can that viral moment extend into the rest of your work?

Be ready for that moment..

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Juan is a digital marketing & motivational specialist – with a unique perspective in both of these areas. As an avid marketer who's worked with some of the top wealth builders in the world and driven empowerment speaker who thrives on changing lives, Juan's sole purpose in life is to help others identify theirs.

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