Logo of German shoe company, Adidas. (Photo : Reuters)
Adidas is seeking to double its current social media following of 135 million cumulative users on Twitter, Instagram, Facebook , YouTube and Adidas's social media customer relations unit, by 2017.
The sports-accessories maker also wants to get at least 30 percent of its social media content to be generated by the users. That seems to be ambitious dream and analysts predict that it can backfire.
The company's five-year-plan released in March states, "Best is what our consumers, athletes, teams, partners and media will say about us once people are saying that we are the best."
Hash-tags often become thrash-tags.
McDonald's launched the #McDStories in 2012 to rev up the brand image only to receive an undesired mouthful of comments of on the bad quality of its food.
J.P. Morgan had to abort the 2013 Twitter Q&A session, #AskJPM, after it received unnecessary and undesired attention of snarky critics, according to Wall Street Journal.
Chrysler Group had to dismiss its association with a Social Media agency when the agency tweeted: "I find it ironic that Detroit is known as the #motorcity and yet no one here knows how to f- drive."
In an article on Wall Street Journal, Elizabeth Holmes wrote (about Twitter) in 2011, "The nearly six-year-old medium has become a very public complaint line, and ill-considered tweets or hacked Twitter accounts have caused plenty of embarrassment."
Similar things happen on other social media sites, such as Facebook and Instagram, too.
However, Adidas has already started the discussion, and if anyone has any plan of following Adidas on social media platforms, it may already be a part of the company's 5-year-goals, Kicks on Fire stated.
It is notable that Twitter, Facebook and Instagram are very effective sites to reach younger consumers, and many companies have tasted success in their marketing plans using them.
Taco Bell's Native Ads on Instagram account, for instance, had "laid back, unobtrusive, even amateurish in the photography sense, giving Taco Bell an approachable, fun feel and making them almost like a lifestyle brand," according to digital analyst Brad Hines.
Arby's, which has a big hat on its logo, tweeted to Daft Punk's big-hat-wearing Pharrell Williams during the 2014 Grammy telecast: "Hey @Pharrell, can we have our hat back? #GRAMMYs."
The tweet was retweeted 81,764 times and got 48,437 favorites on the microblogging platform, Twitter.
Adidas may be wishing something similar to happen with its plans.
