Snoop wants you to rap about anti-virus and hackers in this terrible marketing campaign

Using a celebrity endorsement can be a really successful tool in achieving attention of media and online community. However, in most cases, using a celebrity relevant to a product or service is a lot more effective in delivering a clear message than a completely random one.This story is about a random one.

In 2010, Symantec bizarrely teamed-up with rapper Snoop Dogg (a.k.a. Snoop Lion) in an awareness campaign called “Hack is Wack”. The idea was to make an anti-cybercrime rap video and submit it to a competition to win a Toshiba laptop, some tickets to one of Snoop’s concerts and an opportunity to meet Snoop Dogg’s management team. Yes, Snoop Dogg's management team. Not Snoop Dogg himself.





Video

The campaign was ridiculed on the internet (no surprise). Symantec has long taken down its promotional videos featuring Snoop and its associated website content, but fortunately this guy captured the magic for posterity. Check the video below.







Let‘s call one of those rap guys

I wonder how was Snoop chosen for the campaign? Somehow I imagine Symantec‘s executive trying to be „up-to-date with younger generations“ and looking like Steve Buscemi (in the GIF below) and saying „We should use one of those rap guys“.



Jokes aside, I like Snoop, but from marketer‘s perspective this was a terrible choice. Snoop Dogg isn’t known for being a model citizen. In fact, he’s been accused and convicted of a number of crimes:

In 1990, he was convicted of cocaine possession.

In 1993, he pled guilty for gun possession.

Snoop was also tried and acquitted of murder charges in 1996. The case involved the killing of an alleged gang member who was shot by someone in the vehicle Snoop was riding in.

In 2005, Snoop was sued for allegedly sexually assaulting a woman at the taping of Jimmy Kimmel Live in 2003.

Snoop made legal news again in 2006. He and his posse were taken in custody at a London airport in April after the group got into a fight at the terminal.

In 2006, he was arrested at the Bob Hope Airport in Burbank, California, after officers found marijuana and a gun in Snoop’s vehicle.



Although these crimes are not linked to identity thefts, hackers, etc., Snoop is not a role model who should have been in „anti-cyber-crime“ campaign.





Campaign’s website – full of security holes and vulnerabilities

Even more embarrassingly the security giant went live with a branded site that was infested with security holes, including a cross-site scripting flaw that amusingly lent itself to a rickrolling attack. In a statement issued almost a week later, Symantec acknowledged the problems, which it said „were now resolved“.

The security problems with the site prompted a question on Twitter:

Did they hire Snoop Dog as just a spokesman or did he also write the code?“

#hackiswacked





Results

They succeeded in getting about 200 videos uploaded, so kudos to them (I guess). The quality of the submissions, however, is, um, well, let’s just point out that no video received more than 2 of 5 stars at the end of the contest. Snoop is probably disappointed.

History doesn’t record who won the competition (at least I could not find it), and what Snoop Dogg’s management team made of them. But some of the competition entries can still be found on YouTube. Here are few gems:

If marketers were actually involved in this campaign, they failed to go viral the way they wanted. The campaign was poorly executed. All it received was mockery.





Need more ideas?

If this was not enough for you, here are few more ideas for celebrity endorsed campaigns. Feel free to use them. I believe they can compete with “Hack is wack”.

Charlie Sheen + Tide

He would talk how this magic white powder changed his life. At the end of the campaign no one would know whether he talks about Tide or Cocaine.







Chris Brown + Peta

Campaign’s main objective: to raise awareness of animal abuse.







Conclusion

“Hack is wack” was a shameful campaign with poor execution:

Terrible idea. What could have gone right here?



Poor choice of celebrity. Why would you choose someone with criminal history to spread the awareness of anti-cybercrime, hackers, identity thefts, etc.?



Campaign’s website was full of security holes. Symantec produces software for security. Shouldn’t security be their top priority? What should I think about them when they can’t even guarantee their own security?



Oh, one more thing. They could not even spell Snoop’s name right. Here’s a post with the screenshot of contest’s rules. They spelled "Snoop Dog” everywhere (forgetting the additional “g” in “Dogg”. Follow Marketing Shmarketing on Facebook and Twitter.

