Pricing vs. Social Networks: "We Boobed"

It is all over the news and the blogosphere ... an interesting story about pricing and sizing. The gist of it is that British retailer Marks & Spencer was charge more for bigger bras. It makes sense ... more bra, more engineering, more costs, higher prices. Well, okay, it made sense to someone at M&S.

• How did this play out? A group formed on Facebook called "Busts 4 Justice". Sign-ups for this group took off, and the publicity they garnered was overwhelming.
  
• After embarassing itself with bad responses to the campaign, M&S reformed their pricing policy and kicked off a "We boobed" campaign (see creative below).
• The, er, upside for M&S is that there sales have, er, bounced back substantially after all of the publicity.

This experience demonstrates three things:

1. Social Media is WAY powerful. Companies need to pay attention to it and respond to it quickly, with honesty and integrity.
2. Bad pricing is just bad business. Bad PR is worse.
3. You can win when you are up against the wall - if you are smart. Pick a good strategy, put some great advertising behind it, and go win.