This is the slideshow and recap for the SXSW Suxorz panel, an overview of the year's worst social media advertising. The panel occurred on March 14, 2009. Panelists were Zadi Diaz, Mike Monello, Jeff Jarvis and Sarah Smith. Henry Copeland moderated.

1. S UXOR Z 09!
The worst social
media marketing in
recent memory...
SXSW Panel
Austin, TX
March 14, 2009

2. Metadata
Panelists:
Zadi Diaz: Epic Fu, twitter.com/zadi
Jeff Jarvis: Buzzmachine, /jeffjarvis
Sara K. Smith: Wonkette, /wonkette
Mike Monello: CampfireNY, /mikemonello
Moderator:
Henry Copeland: Blogads, /hc (moderator)
Web coordinates:
Twitter tags: #Suxorz, #SXSW
Facebook group: http://bit.ly/pheXz
Podcast of '09 panel: http://bit.ly/XDmOq

3. Review: Suxorz '08 panel
HP pays for self-abuse Cisco spams wikipedia
with “the human network”
Summary of our fun in 2008: http://bit.ly/suxorz08

4. Round I. Hey, anybody can do it!
In which panelists agree that everyone
in the room runs the risk of looking
foolish at some point.
In social media, anybody
can be an expert.
Or be an idiot.
But at least none of us have
looked this foolish yet.

5. 1) Insta-Twitter experts
Monello had lots of fun
lambasting Matt Bacak – self-
proclaimed king of twitter.
Nervous laughter... who in the
room had not stretched their
social media credentials
slightly at some point?
Source: http://www.prweb.com/releases/frontier/marketing/prweb1686664.htm
http://www.google.com/search?client=safari&rls=en-us&q=5+steps+to+success+on+twitter&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8

6. Declaring yourself a twitter
expert can be dangerous.
Though today Matt Bacak
has 41k followers, he's had
to follow 44k people to get
there.
And then there are the
industry accolades...
The good news:
Bacak won round 1
in our voting.

7. 2) viraltweets.com
Diaz got a big laugh
just playing the video
by the Viraltweets get-
rich-quick guy.
Visit http://www.viraltweets.com/

8. 3) Jarvis noted that it's easy to put out a
press release highlighting your social
media exploits.... but smarter to
actually do something.
“Metro Ford of Schenectady is ready to set an example for car dealers
aroundthe Capital Region. With the importance of new media at an all-time
high, one of Albany’s largest and most successful dealerships is
abandoning most traditional media and embarking on an entirely new
social campaign that is providing exceptionally exciting results.
These new outlets such as Facebook and Twitter, among others, allow
Metro Ford to reach thousands of prospective customers at a fraction of
the price. Facebook, a social networking website allows for users to
network with people by city, workplace, school, and region. This provides a
great opportunity to inform prospective car buyers about events and
special sales information, but also a free haven for video sharing, online
games, and photos. Metro Ford currently has their own page, and are
constantly active, updating with the latest applications in networking
capabilities.”

9. 4) Some renegades still insist
on “antisocial media”
Smith discovered that
Baltimore's Constellation
Energy believes it can forbid
other sites from linking to it.

10. Round II: Revenge of the blogosphere (a)

11. 1) Hasbro/Mattel vs. Scrabulous
Monello gave Hasbro
demerits for killing
Scrabulous, a greatly
admired service, and
substituting its own
mediocre imitation of the
imitation.
Source: http://venturebeat.com/2009/01/06/f-a-i-l-official-scrabble-facebook-apps-still-smaller-than-scrabulous-was/

12. Scrabble user sez:
Monello noted that
even on the morning of
our panel, Scrabulous
fans were still griping.

13. 2) Skittles Twitter Campaign
Diaz knocked Skittles for letting ANY twitterer's
comments – even racist, sexist or just moronic –
appear on Skittles.com. Suxorz attendees countered
that the fact that we were discussing the campaign
was a sign of Skittles' genius.

14. 3) KFC blog
Jarvis blasted KFC for starting an employee blog, and then not reading it.
One blogging employee, fired for unrelated reasons, used the KFC blog to point
readers to her personal blog, where she posted that she'd been fired for retaliating
against a sexual harrassor.
As of the panel on March 14, five weeks later, that post remained untouched.
KFC won round 2 of our voting.
(As of March 23, the post had been edited to remove the link and the employee's
blog is gone!)

15. KFC employee blog
Fired employee (and
blogger) Monica Bryant
makes a farewell post
linking to her own blog,
where she alleges sexual
harassment by colleague.

16. Monica's post...
“Let me tell you about the
kind of environment I was
working in.”

17. 4) “Joe the Plumber” Signs
Smith pilloried the McCain
campaign for actually
trusting the public to not go
crazy when opening up its
“design your own bumper
sticker” store online.
Source: http://wonkette.com/403690/make-your-own-joe-the-plumber-sign-watch-it-get-rejected

18. Round III: Revenge of blogosphere (b)

19. 1) Belkin
Monello fried Belkin for
offering, via Amazon's
Mechanical Turk
service, to pay people to
post positive comments.

20. 2) The Whopper Sacrifice
Diaz pilloried Burger King's “friend sacrifice” on
Facebook, suggesting it perverted Facebook's service
and atmosphere. Some folks in the room argued that,
on the contrary, Burger King captured perfectly part of
the Facebook experience: resenting faux-friends and
wishing you had an excuse for unfriending them.
Source: http://www.facebook.com/apps/application.php?id=33988778285
http://www.insidefacebook.com/2009/01/14/whopper-sacrifice-shut-down-by-facebook/

21. 3) Motorola Krave on gadget
blogs
Jeff Jarvis blasted a Motorola
employee, who had posted a
series of positive reviews,
often irrelevant and weirdly
formulaic, across a variety of
gadget blogs.

22. 4) Rebuild The Party
Smith got big laughs noting that an
unofficial GOP social media
attempt to get people contributing
ideas to save the party resulting in
ideas like “Trucknutz for all!”
Source: http://wonkette.com/404320/its-truck-nutz-vs-paultards-in-gop-fixin-ideas-contest

23. Finalists
Matt Bacak (& all insta-gurus)
Belkin
KFC Nation

24. And Suxorz grand winner is:
Belkin
By a nearly unanimous vote, the
audience dinged Belkin for
blatantly polluting social media.

25. Lessons
• Don't take yourself too seriously. (Auto-experts)
• If you build it, watch it. (KFC)
• Don't prostitute social media. (Belkin)
• If social media adopts something cool, borrow or
buy it, but don't snuff. (Scabble)
• If you play with social media rules, expect some
to hate you... but others will love you. (Whopper
& Skittles)
• If you let people play with your tool, you may get
played. (McCain Bumper Stickers and “Rebuild
the Party.”)

26. Thank you SXSW!
We laughed, we cried, we
jabbed and stroked. (Did No doubt amoral social media
anyone snore?) marketeers, shamed two
years running, will finally grow
up and leave the Suxorz
unpopulated in '10. Mkay?
So see you soon on
Twitter, the virtual Austin.
“Trucknutz for all!”