Social Media Fiascos by Firms Around the World

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What's up with these American companies and their terrible habit of misreading situations. One thing that even a 5-yr old knows is not to joke about a funeral, especially one that has half the nation shocked to the core. We had a difficult time in choosing between the given examples, given the paucity of our report but Epicurious'[4] beat out tough competition from American Apparel's Challenger Context Fail to take the cake.

It’s nice when companies find a way to offer a heartfelt message to people who’ve suffered some sort of hardship. What’s not nice is when they try to capitalize on a much-talked about tragedy in order to push their products.

Many have done it, but perhaps the oddest case was that of food magazine Epicurious senselessly Tweeting scone and breakfast recipes to buoy our spirits the day after the Boston Marathon bombing. “Boston, our hearts are with you. Here’s a bowl of breakfast energy we could all use to start today.” Seriously Guys?(See Exhibit C)

Despite evidence to the contrary, you don’t actually have to say anything about a tragic event or disaster. If you or your company has a relevant message, you can communicate that, but if you’re commenting just for the sake of commenting, don’t. It could easily come off as generic and heartless.

So the tweet should have looked something like this,

"Boston, our hearts are with you in these tough times. Stay Strong."

To the social media managers at Epicurious, you couldn't come up with this.

Kindergarten Mistakes: British entertainment retailer, HMV made the dire mistake of giving access to the company Twitter account to a whole bunch of staffers, and then unceremoniously firing them before revoking access. It shouldn’t have been a surprise then that these unsatisfied employees took to Twitter and began badmouthing the company, calling the 60 layoffs a “mass execution.” This forced the HMV executives to publicly explain internal business, essentially airing dirty laundry that could have been kept private had they had a closer eye on their social media accounts.

One of the fired HMV employees put it best when he/she Tweeted, “Never fire the social media people until you’ve changed the passwords: @hmvtweets has gone rogue.” Some companies give anyone and everyone access to their social media accounts, which could not be more ill-advised.

So the clear and loud message is "No, your unpaid intern should not be able to become the public mouthpiece of your gigantic corporation." Handling the company’s social media may have once been deemed a fluff task, but by now you should know better and handle the position with care.

As long as we are talking about childish mistakes, you should never post anything vulgar or offensive like swear words and racist/sexist imageries. Come on, this is the first thing taught in any Social Media Marketing class. Some famous examples would include StubHub dropping the F-bomb wherein someone posted a vulgar tweet from StubHub's account, calling the ticket sales website a "stubsucking hell hole." The tweet was up for about an hour before the company finally deleted it and issued an apology. It's unclear whether the tweet came from an unhappy StubHub employee or if the account was hacked.

How would you react if, by innocently scanning a Heinz ketchup QR code, you were directed to a hardcore porn website? That’s exactly what happened to German resident Daniel Korell last June. Turns out that when the scannable barcode campaign expired last year, Heinz didn’t renew the connected URL, allowing Fundorado, a German purveyor of porn, to scoop it up.Same goes for Pepsi's Swedish branch releasing a set of Facebook ads featuring a voodoo doll of competitor Portugal's megastar Cristiano Ronaldo tied to train tracks, getting his head crushed in, and covered in pins as a statement in support of the Swedish Football Team against their world cup qualifying match against Portugal with a regrettable caption that read, "We're gonna pass over Portugal". They were forced to quickly remove them and apologize after a Portuguese anti-Pepsi Facebook group formed and gained over 100K fans in a day.

Can you imagine the loss in brand image that these actions can trigger? I mean, a global football icon like Ronaldo who plays for one the greatest football clubs, Real Madrid and is not only the most followed athlete across Instagram, Facebook and Twitter but a national icon as well who has over 200 million social media followers can effectively ruin your brand. You can lose substantial market shares at the snap of your fingers. He could join your competitors and that would be nothing short of 'game over'. It was smart on Pepsi's behalf to act quickly and apologize to Ronaldo and cover up the situation so as to avoid disastrous repercussions. They were equally lucky that Ronaldo didn't take any issue with the matter and passed it off as something to laugh about.

The difference between those who fail and those who succeed in the age of social media is simple. Success is no longer about fancy packaging and carefully controlled messages. When everyone can see what you’re doing, the most essential values are transparency, honesty and credibility. Even with advanced privacy tools — like private lists, tweets and circles — the most foolproof way to stay safe on social media is simply to be who you say you are. Pretending to be something you’re not, or attempting to conceal or manipulate the truth is a surefire way to lose. You win by matching your image with reality, acting with integrity, and sincerely apologizing when you’re wrong.

All they need to remember that a little bit of sensibility and goodwill are the key ingredients to successful social media interaction and that's true for almost all the walks of life.

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