Lessons to learn from Social Media Fails

Lessons-to-learn-from-social-media-fails

Social Media is definitely one of the strongest tools to get your brand the exposure it requires. You can garner a lot of attention through campaigns but sometimes, these campaigns can get you unwanted attention and could ruin your brand image instead of help! Here’s a list of brands that ruined their reputation due to mistakes that could have been very well avoided:

Adidas – Boston Marathon

Completing the Boston Marathon is an achievement for many. Considering this, in 2017, Adidas sent out an email with the message, ‘Congrats, you survived the Boston Marathon!’. However, the message received a lot of backlash from its finishers where they questioned the mega-brand how they didn’t realize the relation the message would have to the 2013 bombing that took place at the same event.

Here are some tweets in response to the email:

The company quickly took down the tweet and issued an apology for the same.

 

US Airways’ NSFW tweet

What started as a regular Twitter conversation between a US Airways’ passenger and their staff quickly escalated to a hideous and shocking incident. Here’s what happened; a customer named ‘Elle’ tweeted about her disappointment about delay in one of the flights.

After a little to and fro, US Airways replied with one of the most graphic images any brand could have posted!

Here are the tweets:

Department of Education – Misspelling You would think that the U.S. Department of Education would be cautious and would know their language well. But, well, they didn’t! Early in 2017, the DoE tweeted a picture of W.E.B. Du Bois — a civil-rights activist, scholar, and co-founder of the NAACP — along with a phrase by Du Bois about the importance of education. The only problem? The spelling was wrong! Here’s what they tweeted:

Yes, people noticed, and Twitter went crazy! Take a look at how people responded:

Several hours later, the tweet was taken down. An apology was tweeted that read: http://nymag.com/selectall/2017/02/department-of-education-misspells-tweet.html And there is was again! That tweet has been deleted and the Department of Education has since tweeted a new, typo-free, apology.

Third time’s the charm, you see?

What we all should pick up from these incidents is that a brand’s online reputation can make or break a brand. Thus, one must make sure one doesn’t make such avoidable mistakes. Get in touch with us as soon as possible and let us handle your ORM (Online Reputation Management).