Twitter Blunders by Big Companies: Learn from Others’ Mistakes

 

Twitter can be a place to connect with consumers, promote new items and create conversation about your brand – but you only want good conversation.

All it takes is marketing knowledge and common sense to manage a Twitter account for a business. But as shown by these companies, common sense isn’t all that common.

Here are four major companies that have created bad conversations about their brand – and how to avoid the same.

Kenneth Cole’s failed attempt at comedy

In February 2011, thousands of protesters helped oust Hosni Mubarak, ex-president of Egypt. These 18 days of protests resulted in deadly encounters with police and military.

Some companies showed concern and hoped for peace in Egypt. Kenneth Cole tried to make a joke out of the situation, claiming their latest collection was the reason for the Middle Eastern revolution:

Source: http://blog.conduit.com/2013/08/22/5-tweets-gone-horribly-wrong/

To no one’s surprise (except the designer clothing company), it wasn’t funny.

The Important Lesson: There is a time and place for comedy – a serious, political and deadly situation is not one of those times.

Gap promotes its website while some lose everything

More than a year later, thousands of New Yorkers and New Jersey residents are still dealing with the effects of Hurricane Sandy. While people were literally weathering the storm, Gap tried to make a few extra bucks out of the whole situation:

Source: http://mashable.com/2012/10/31/gap-tweet-hurricane-sandy/

Oh, and yes – Gap “checked-in” at Frankenstorm Apocalypse in New York City.

The Important Lesson: Be sensitive from the start until the end of your tweet. There are some situations that a tweet should be 100% thoughtful, not just another ad.

Instead of making money, be generous and offer your services to those in need. Example: Verizon, who brought fiber-optic Internet to Fire Island, NY, when it was struck by Hurricane Sandy.

Entenmanns was not on the same page

Thanks to the semi-crazy HLN news anchors, everyone watched the Casey Anthony murder trial – and most were not happy with the verdict. Almost immediately, #NotGuilty was trending on Twitter. People felt that no justice had been served for Anthony’s murdered child, Caylee.

The Entenmanns’ office must’ve been one of the few places without the trial on the TV. They tweeted:

Source: http://techcrunch.com/2011/07/05/entenmanns-hashtag-surfing-fails-hard-with-notguilty-tweet/

The Important Lesson: Always check why a word or phrase is trending before you include it in a tweet.

Bing

The 2011 earthquake and tsunami in Japan were tragic – and Microsoft’s Bing turned this disaster into a campaign:

Source: https://twitter.com/bing/status/46597693585358848

Bing was hoping for 100,000 retweets to promote the search engine – because only that would make Japan worthy of the donation (hope you picked up on the sarcasm there).

The Important Lesson: Charity should be a part of any business, but don’t turn make a social media campaign out of it. Consumers support genuine companies and will call out the inauthentic ones.

Take a lesson from Microsoft’s competitor, Apple. Instead of making a campaign out of the tsunami, the company had an easy place to donate to the American Red Cross on iTunes. This encouraged people to donate without it turning into a promotion.

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