{"id":22575,"date":"2025-08-21T18:25:48","date_gmt":"2025-08-21T18:25:48","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mysourcefunding.com\/?p=22575"},"modified":"2025-08-21T18:25:51","modified_gmt":"2025-08-21T18:25:51","slug":"what-happens-when-your-social-stunt-goes-terribly-wrong","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mysourcefunding.com\/?p=22575","title":{"rendered":"What happens when your social stunt goes terribly wrong?"},"content":{"rendered":"

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Dave Mead, chief marketing officer and co-founder of the Austin, Texas-based sparkling mineral water brand Rambler, thought he had landed on the perfect social video idea.<\/p>\n

The plan was to outfit an old Jeep with the water brand\u2019s logo and current tagline (\u201cChug Life\u201d) and send it soaring off of a cliff in Glacier View, Alaska, as part of an annual Fourth of July car launch, recording the whole thing for social media. The hope was to make something entertaining enough to gain enough attention online and grow the brand\u2019s social following while boosting brand awareness as Rambler moves into more markets nationally.<\/p>\n

Leading up to the event, Mead said, he was feeling nervous about what might go wrong.<\/p>\n

\u201cI had butterflies because we only get one chance,\u201d Mead told Marketing Brew. \u201cWhat if there\u2019s a clog in the fuel line? What if it dies and it just coasts over that thing and then just rolls down and is anticlimactic? Everybody launching a car there has the same dream and the same vision of launching their car farther [than] anybody.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Jeep didn\u2019t end up going farther than anyone else\u2019s car that day, and it didn\u2019t end up soaring over the cliff at all. Instead, the car veered left and drove straight into two trees, taking them down\u2014and, with them, Rambler\u2019s carefully laid social content plans.<\/p>\n

\u201cI just thought, \u2018I cannot believe we just spent months planning and preparing and spent all this money getting up here, and I have no car launch,\u2019\u201d Mead said.<\/p>\n

The team didn\u2019t linger on the failure for long\u2014when they returned to Texas, they pivoted to sending water as part of relief efforts for the July 4th floods in Kerr County, Texas. After a few weeks passed, though, the team revisited the footage and tried to figure out if anything was salvageable.<\/p>\n

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Instead of chucking it altogether, Rambler\u2019s marketing team ended up releasing the failed car-launch video. To do so, Rambler partnered with a viral fail video page, Send It, which has nearly 800,000 followers on Instagram, to spin the brand\u2019s marketing failure into the social moment Mead wanted.<\/p>\n

The team eventually recognized \u201cthat we were sitting on some gold,\u201d Mead said. \u201cThere were 38 cars launched, 37 of them were successful, and they\u2019re all the same. They\u2019re all similar. Ours was unlike anyone else\u2019s.\u201d<\/p>\n

Rambler is primarily focused on event sponsorship to get its cans of sparkling water into the hands of potential customers, and it\u2019s using the moment to boost digital marketing efforts like it had initially planned\u2014with some additional changes. Rambler paired a giveaway with the release of the car-launch video, offering those who like, follow, tag friends, and share the video a chance to win a free trip to Alaska for two and $500 worth of gear from Send It\u2014to help boost interest in the spot.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe intention was to go create some wild content, but not just let it live in our feed,\u201d Mead said. \u201cWe\u2019re gonna go create something cool, something wild, that people are gonna want to see, and that\u2019s going to increase our following.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

Read the full article here<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Dave Mead, chief marketing officer and co-founder of the Austin, Texas-based sparkling mineral water brand Rambler, thought he had landed on the perfect social video idea. The plan was to outfit an old Jeep with the water brand\u2019s logo and current tagline (\u201cChug Life\u201d) and send it soaring off of a cliff in Glacier View, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":22576,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"content-type":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[78],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-22575","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-marketing"},"yoast_head":"\nWhat happens when your social stunt goes terribly wrong? | Brandiary<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Dave Mead, chief marketing officer and co-founder of the Austin, Texas-based sparkling mineral water brand Rambler, thought he had landed on the perfect\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/mysourcefunding.com\/?p=22575\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"What happens when your social stunt goes terribly wrong? 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