Benihana: Scaring away the brand awareness
So I was reading Lamebook, as I do, because I really am serious about that procrastination I mentioned on the homepage, and came across this little gem:
This is a great example of how not to use the new Facebook feature to link statuses to actual businesses – if people start to realize that brands are not only monitoring them like Big Brother, but then punishing them for mentioning their names, they’ll pretty soon stop mentioning them. Which is a potential loss of a lot of eyeballs.
And Benihana: Really? Was the $20 or less you ‘saved’ calling Jason out on his possible double-couponing (which, by the way, isn’t even clear from his status – his reference to multiple birthday coupons could have meant anything from gift certificates to coupons from other retailers) really worth the damage you just did to your brand by looking like the kind of company which stalks people on Facebook and punishes them like this?
Especially when we all know that Jason could have been in the system twice through no fault of his own – plenty of companies have terrible data collection and management systems, and it’s entirely possible that poor Jason wasn’t trying to run a ‘scam’ at all, but was simply sent two free lunch coupons in error because Benihana has a junior halfwit managing their database, who doesn’t know how to run a script to catch duplicates.
Though this little incident goes a long way to explaining why every Benihana I’ve ever been in has ratty carpets, old-fashioned (and just plain old) decor, and is correspondingly overpriced.