The Bizarre Instagram Fad Causing Elmer’s Glue Shortages

You can make all kinds of slime out of Elmer’s glue, and it is officially a big deal on Instagram. There are retail shortages of glue thanks to the fad.

The most interesting part of this story, though, is the question of whether better social media monitoring could have helped the brand predict this fad and ramp up production to anticipate it. Somewhere in the feed, weeks before the shelves emptied, the signal was there.

This is exactly the kind of connection between social media and supply chain management that needs to happen more often, and it does a better job than any case study of illustrating the real business value of social media beyond just counting likes or followers.