Mashable released their list of their top 15 most shocking social media disasters and we couldn’t help but wonder, what went wrong? How could they not see this coming? Almost all of these individuals suffered major damage to their reputation and as we all at BrandProtect know, once lost it is very hard to get it back.
Join us while we go over our favorite social media disasters and add our own little commentary. The examples go from “ok, that was an honest mistake” all the way to “what in the world was he/she thinking?!”
GoDaddy CEO videos himself shooting an Elephant:
The last quarter of 2011 was not nice to GoDaddy. The domain registrar and hosting company saw a large number of detractors and a social media storm heading their way after their now former CEO Bob Parsons posted a video of him killing and butchering an elephant in Africa. While his motivations may have been altruistic (he claims he was helping the village provide valuable food resources to the locals) his response left much to ask from the self-made millionaire: “I kind of figured that this might happen. So be it, I’m not ashamed of what I did”. Things didn’t get better when the company decided to publicly support the SOPA bill. Their new CEO has now announced that they officially oppose SOPA.
- What went wrong? It is not the first time a public person’s private videos or pictures make headlines. Most of the times the trending stops after he/she makes an apologetic statement. His already tainted public image; however, makes this a difficult save. Bob did nothing to put out the fire; in fact, he added fuel with his in-your-face defensive mechanism.
Chrysler’s F-bomb slips out on Twitter:
A classic mistake; a personal tweet went out on the main account. An New Media Strategies agency staffer working on the @ChryslerAutos twitter handle mistakenly tweeted “I find it ironic that Detroit is known as the #motorcity and yet no one here knows how to f***ing drive”. The social media world exploded, hundreds of retweets and screengrabs started circulating the net and the hashtag #motorcity became a trending topic. Chrysler was quickly to remove the offending tweet and apologize claiming their account had been “compromised”. They ended their contract with NMS and posted an apologetic blog post.
- What went wrong? Not much went wrong here. While Chrysler was prompt to delete and reply to the tweet, they missed out a tremendous chance to turn this social media disaster into anopportunity for brand loyalty. If you want to see how it’s done, you can read about the American Red Cross example; they managed to turn a rogue tweet into a blood donating campaign.
Netflix’s @Qwikster weed-smoking Elmo:
When Netflix decided to create their now defunct DVD service; they chose the very catchy name Qwikster without realizing that the Twitter handle already belonged to Jason Castillo who’s Elmo avatar mainly tweeted about weed and foul language. Cue in sarcastically funny mentions and memes.
- What went wrong? Netflix forgot to do the very basic: to do an online search on the possible brand name and even better to use a social media monitoring tool and analyze the sentiment results.
Gilbert Gottfried’s Japan Jokes:
We all remember the earthquake and tsunami that devastated the Japanese islands on March of 2011. While the entire world saw shocking images of the destruction that followed, Mr. Gottfried was tweeting several tasteless jokes such as “I just split up with my girlfriend, but like the Japanese say, ‘There’ll be another one floating by any minute now’”. His insensitive sense of humor cost him his Aflac spokesperson position.
- What went wrong? Gilbert Gottfried is known for his volatile and disrespectful comedy style (who remembers his 9/11 jokes just three weeks after the attack?). Aflac responded skillfully by releasing a statement where they publicly fired Gottfried and showed their solidarity to the Japanese by donating more than $1.2 million to the International Red Cross.
BlackBerry Blackout and social media silence:
Chances are you were one of the affected BlackBerry customers who experienced a days-long blackout where emails, bbm and other notifications were affected. Problems were made worse when BlackBerry representatives failed to provide an official statement or explanation and remained silent even after furious customers (and celebrities!) took to social media networks to express their frustration.
- What went wrong? This has become 2011’s prime example of how NOT to respond to a social media crisis. We even wrote about it back in October and recommended BlackBerry to rewrite their Reputation Management Plan.
For the complete list of Mashable’s 2011 Social Media Disasters, click here.
Comments! Which one’s your favourite? Do you think we missed one? Let us know
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