What is the proper response for social media blunders?
March 16, 2011
Social media & marketing agency New Media Strategies has recently come under fire in the press & by their former employer, Chrysler, for a pretty big mistake made on the @ChryslerAutos Twitter account on March 9th. Chrysler engaged the services of New Media Strategies to manage their social media accounts for consumers. They have a new campaign focused on made-in-Detroit cars and spent a huge amount of money on Super Bowl ads with rapper Eminem, who is from the Motor City himself. During this particularly critical time, an employee of NMS unfortunately tweeted on the company account, “I find it ironic that Detroit is known as the #motorcity and yet no one here knows how to f*ing drive."
Needless to say, dropping the F-bomb on a corporate account is really bad. In addition, to directly take a jab at the whole angle of the campaign while driving compounds the issue. The employee thought they were logged into their personal Twitter account on their phone. However, even if they had posted to their personal account, this is not appropriate coming from a company representative for a major advertising campaign. In today’s connected world, employees are increasingly coming under fire for posts or tweets to personal accounts.
To further complicate the issue, completely different departments and companies manage multiple social media accounts for Chrysler. They have a communications department that manages media-oriented social media accounts. A professional agency manages their consumer-oriented accounts. With two completely different departments/companies in charge of all their social media presence, Chrysler had to scramble to deal with the onslaught of inquiries about the mishap.
So what is the right choice for Chrysler to do in this particular case? The employee responsible was immediately fired from NMS according to Chrysler’s blog, and now the agency no longer handles Chrysler’s social media. Responses to the company’s blog post about the employee’s termination has been extremely mixed. The official response from the company comes off as too corporate for most in the social media world. This is in sharp contrast to another recent Twitter faux pas from the Red Cross. An employee mistakenly posted to the Red Cross Twitter account about getting wasted. The Red Cross responded appropriately, and rather cleverly, by deleting the tweet and posting: “We’ve deleted the rogue tweet but rest assured the Red Cross is sober and we’ve confiscated the keys.” This tweet acknowledging that there had been a faux pas and making it humorous is definitely a better-received announcement on Twitter & the blogosphere.
So should Chrysler have tried to shake it off with a laugh? Admittedly, their situation is different. This was a paid employee of an outside agency, not a volunteer at a non-profit. Their tweet undermined millions of dollars in advertising dollars. With two competing agencies handling all of Chrysler’s social media, one can only imagine where this particular strategy was even derived. Perhaps company lawyers came up with this response? In this day and age, it is important to have a strategic plan for your social media accounts in addition to an elegant way to handle errors or mistakes already in place before disaster strikes.
