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“Oh my God, think of how much money we spent on this.” – Sandra Kennedy, Harry Rosen

A warning to companies: Don't rush into social media just because you've heard it's cool. Last spring, the upscale clothier Harry Rosen launched a campaign urging Canadian men during these difficult economic times to have confidence. Roger Martin of the Rotman School of Management, ad man Rob Guenette of Taxi, and Porter Airlines CEO Robert Deluce were drafted as models and enlisted to blog about their business successes. But during a forum on social media sponsored by Adobe this week, Harry Rosen's director of marketing, Sandra Kennedy, recalled that only about 1,000 people had visited the blog by the end of the campaign, making it an embarrassing and expensive flop. When so few readers materialized, Ms. Kennedy said the company scrambled to find ways to throw the content up onto Facebook and other online outlets. “The good news is, you do learn from those things,” she said. One thing we expect they've learned? That their customers are too busy running the world to stop and read blogs.