Worst of the Week: Little Debbie

Do you know the muffin man? … The muffin man? … The muffin man?  We thought we knew the muffin man ’til he dissed our summer intern! In this case the muffin man is a she … as in Little Debbie. Sure, she looks sweet and innocent with that cute little hat, curly red hair and that smile. But deep down, she sold us out.

This summer, (when our intern actually was here most of the week), Little Debbie ran an online promotion called “Intern Hero”.  The contest is closed now, but basically, if you were featured on the Intern Hero Web site, your office was going to receive free muffins courtesy of Little Debbie. We were pumped. Here is our “winning” entry.

The box that our intern is wearing reads, “You ain’t seen nothin’ till your down on your muffin.” Well, Little Debbie, not only are we down on your muffin, we’re down on your brand!

See, we entered your Intern Hero contest.  We were featured on your Web site.  We blogged about you. We tweeted about you. We followed you on Twitter and you followed back. You Retweeted our blog post. Out intern even did a presentation to an Iowa State University freshman class about how excited we were about Intern Hero, the Little Debbie brand and the impending muffins.

We thought, “Little Debbie is a brand that gets it.” We were all about loving on the Little Debbie brand! We were your brand advocates and it was all good in social media land.

Then one month passed.

Then two months passed.

Then three months passed.

Guess what? No muffins. Hmm. Our intern hero? Well, he’s back at school full time. Sure he comes in a couple of times a week, and each time he walks in the door, we have to tell him, “Sorry dude, no muffins.” Our intern hero tweeted about you, politely. “Haven’t seen our muffins” was the jist, included the @littledebbie. No response.

You would have been better off never running this campaign than not living up to your promise of sending muffins. I mean, doing nothing would have been better than promising something then not delivering. As for the AdMavericks, we’re hunting for other companies to fulfill our muffin needs. We’ll link to them for our reader’s benefit. Maybe one of them would be nice enough to send us some muffins! That’d make us fans.

“Muffins that probably won’t leave a bitter taste in your mouth”

Uncle Wally’s Muffins
Otis Spunkmeyer Muffins
Hostess Mini Muffins
I’m even posting “Corn Muffins” – Jiffy Mix

I doubt local food companies in Des Moines like Palmer’s Deli or Gateway Market would fail if they promised to deliver. “Yeah, I’d like my muffins” – “Be there in three months, maybe.” They’d be out of business.

Everything about the Little Debbie Intern Hero campaign was done well. Except the last step. The most important, easy to do fulfillment step.

Shame on you Little Debbie. You’re our Worst of the Week.

Author: AdMavericks
www.lessingflynn.com

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Tagged as: bad PR, blog, Des Moines, Gateway Market, hostess cupcakes, hostess mini muffins, intern hero, internhero.com, iowa state university, Jiffy Mix, little debbie, little debbie muffins, otis spunkmeyer, Palmer's Deli, spencer anderson, twitter, uncle wally's