Woolworth’s Facebook Page Under Attack! Again….Over The Alan Jones Show

UPDATE: 5pm Monday 22nd October

Woolies posted this update to their page an hour ago! Wow, it took them 7 hours to respond….meanwhile their page has been inundated with unanswered complaints. How NOT to do Social Media Folks. Somebodies in trouble….

“Hi everyone, we just wanted to let you know that due to an oversight, a Woolworths promotion was advertised during the Alan Jones program this morning. We’d like to confirm that our advertising on the program is suspended, but despite our instructions the ad was booked in error by a third party supplier. These ads have now been removed, thanks for your feedback here.”

Woolworth’s Facebook Page is again “under attack” this Monday, from protesters enraged that Woolworths are again advertising on Alan Jones Program, after previously suspending their advertising, after the Young Liberal Party Julia Gillard Gaff. To be fair, Woolworths did say previously they were only “suspending” advertising, and on their Facebook post didn’t give a time frame.

According to some posters on the Woolworths Facebook Page, they believe that Woolworths have set up a filter on their page to block certain comments and posts about Alan Jones. As a Facebook Page Administrator you can’t prevent comments on Page posts, you can of course delete any comments as soon as they are posted, but you can also put filters in place to filter out words that you don’t want posted on your Page. In the comments I saw, none of them actually said “Alan Jones”, but referred to him and his station. The words “Misogyny” and “Sexist” and “Bigoted” do seem to have got past the filter though. Posting to the Woolworths Facebook page hasn’t been disabled at this time, but they have hidden “Posts By Others” from the normal feed, if you go to “posts by others” under “highlights” (see pic) you can view them.

If Facebook ever do allow comments to be disabled on posts, it would of course render any Facebook Page, inactive. Not a good look.

I’m assuming Woolworths knew that this response to their re-advertising on the Alan Jones show would happen, and perhaps they decided to let it go and run it’s course. It will be interesting to see if the negative comments about boycotting Woolworths remain on the site, and for how long Woolworths are prepared to sit it out. There is likely a Social Media team, with their work cut out for them moderating and deleting a LOT of the comments. So far there hasn’t been any reply from the Woolworths team to any of the comments, this may be a strategic approach to try and wait it out. I’m not sure they could say anything right now that would calm things down.

This “wait it out” approach is a bit like having people picketing your store, not sending a rep out to speak to them, and just hoping they will eventually go away. It becomes a sort of Mexican Stand off.

Some will say that this is an example of mob rule, some will say that because Alan Jones is still on the air, that this protest is justified.

Which ever way you look at it, Woolworths social media efforts on their Facebook Page are really completely wasted, it really looks like they were unprepared for what was inevitably going to happen to their page when they started advertising again on the Alan Jones Show. It looks like they set up the filters and ran away not looking back…I think they need to address it, and fast!

What do you think should they get on and start answering some questions? Release a statement? Let me know in comments.