EXCELLENCE: EXCELLING AT SOCIAL MEDIA MARKETING
How to Get Everybody to Love Your Drunken Tweet
When Buzzfeed blasts a headline that reads, “Red Cross Employee Accidentally Tweets About Getting Slizzard, People Donate Lots of $$$ to the Red Cross,” statistically there’s a 100 percent chance that I will click to see what happened.
One slow Friday afternoon at the American Red Cross, then–social media manager Gloria Huang accidentally tweeted the following from the main American Red Cross account, thinking it was her personal account:1
@RedCross
Ryan found two more 4 bottle packs of Dogfish Head’s Midas Touch beer. . . . when we drink we do it right #gettingslizzerd
The internet went wild. Would the American Red Cross—one of the most respected institutions in the country—be able to come back from such a mishap? And if so, how?
First, Gloria tweeted out an apology from her own account:2
@riaglo
Rogue tweet frm @RedCross due to my inability to use hootsuite. . . I wasn’t actually #gettingslizzard but just excited! #nowembarassing
Next, the main American Red Cross account sent out a tweet acknowledging what had happened to its hundreds of thousands of followers.3
@RedCross
We’ve deleted the rogue tweet but rest assured the Red Cross is sober and we’ve confiscated the keys.
As a final positive turn in an already positive story, the Dogfish Beer brand took it upon themselves to tweet out what had happened and ask followers for donations to the American Red Cross.4
@DogfishBeer
RT @Michael_Hayek: #craftbeer @dogfishbeer fans, donate 2 @redcross 2day. Tweet with #gettingslizzerd. Donate here http://tinyurl.com/5s72obb
Not only did the American Red Cross turn around a potential PR disaster with speed, grace, and humor, but they did so in a way that generated unexpected positive coverage and encouraged a bunch of donations. On blogs and news sites everywhere, the resulting story was far less about the mistake than about the handling of it. Ultimately this proved what can happen when brands use social media well—even in a PR crisis.
Unfortunately, not all brands are as adept at overcoming drunk tweeting as the American Red Cross.
THE ART OF SUCKING AT SOCIAL MEDIA
Sucking at social media is a timeless art, and many of the biggest brands around have at some point or another made a disastrous social media post destined to kill their business.
Like McDonald’s. One day in March 2017, the main McDonald’s account on Twitter tweeted:5
@McDonaldsCorp
@RealDonaldTrump You are actually a disgusting excuse of a President and we would love to have @BarackObama back, also you have tiny hands.
In an effort to clean up the mess, McDonald’s took the questionable tactic of a lot of corporate mumbo jumbo. Blaming a vague shadowy entity and citing an “investigation,” they said, “we have determined that our Twitter account was hacked by an external source. We took swift action to secure it, and we apologize this tweet was sent through our corporate McDonald’s account.”6
Possible? Sure. Likely? Not so much.
Chrysler, in bids to become Detroit’s least favorite car company, had their own issues when an employee managing their large account tweeted out the following bombshell after a bad morning commute:7
@ChryslerAutos
I find it ironic that Detroit is known as the #motorcity and yet no one here knows how to fucking drive
Chrysler apologized robotically, saying: “Chrysler Group and its brands do not tolerate inappropriate language or behavior, and apologize to anyone who may have been offended by this communication.”8
Even Twitter executives are not immune to such mishaps. Anthony Noto, the then-CFO of Twitter, accidentally sent a confidential direct message about a potential acquisition as a public Tweet.9
@AnthonyNoto
I still think we should buy them. He is on your schedule for Dec 15 or 16 -- we will need to sell him. i have a plan
So what can we learn from the fact that huge brands—including the social media companies themselves—have unwittingly fallen off the Twitter wagon?
When it comes to being excellent on social media, it’s not how you mess up—it’s how you clean up that matters.
WHAT TO DO WHEN PEOPLE BAD-MOUTH YOUR BRAND
Remembering the old saying that “all press is good press” can also help brands rethink what defines a crisis on social media. Take the case of Starbucks’ wildly successful social media launch of the equally wildly disgusting Unicorn Frappuccino.
With a whopping seventy-six grams of sugar in the venti size (more than three times the daily recommended allowance for women), its success was undeniable.10 As one Starbucks barista on the verge of a melt-down told USA Today, “I have never made so many Frappuccinos in my entire life. My hands are completely sticky. I have unicorn crap all in my hair and on my nose, I have never been so stressed out in my entire life.”11
As one article explained, “The ‘Unicorn Frappuccino’ was a neon-colored, fruity concoction that transitioned from sweet to sour and got some less-than-glowing reviews. Despite having a divisive flavor, the photogenic beverage turned customers into a social media army that fueled nearly 155,000 posts on Instagram and drove major foot traffic with those clamoring to taste the magic before it sold out.”12
And it wasn’t just a hit in terms of sales. The Mobile Marketer Awards called the social media launch of the Frappuccino flavor the “Mobile Campaign of the Year” and analyzed its success. “In April, the coffee chain with 8,000 stores in the US unveiled a limited-edition drink that appears to have been designed not so much for its flavor, but to spark buzz online.”13
Importantly, the buzz about the drink wasn’t positive. It just had to exist. And this was exactly what the Starbucks marketing team was hoping for all along. In many ways, the funny Twitter quotes about the horrors of the Unicorn Frappuccino were even more shareable than the picture-perfect Instagram images. At the end of the day, people purchased because they wanted to be a part of a real-life movement that was created on social media. It’s the essence of social media building true connection. As social media strategist Keith Keller said, “It’s sort of peer-to-peer, isn’t it? [Starbucks] took something that was fun and turned it into a business success.”14
People wanted to be part of the story.15
@cauldron_farts
my friend just sent me a pic of the unicorn frappuccino and it looks like a cupful of soap from various public restrooms
But what if it’s a more serious issue than a seriously bad Frappuccino?
For Cheerios, their public Facebook page has long struggled with inevitable backlash from consumers because the manufacturer, General Mills, has supported legislation protecting genetically modified organisms (GMOs).16 Many of their customers staunchly reject this stance and are vocal about their opposition on social media.
Dennis Jefferson to Cheerios
Hi General mills. . . It’s me again. Question: Have you gone GMO free yet or did you simply lie to the consumer hoping that we’d buy and forget your promise? It was a nice gesture but. . . Still not gon buy until your goods are GMO verified
Molly OBrien to Cheerios
I’m a Cheerios fan, but was sad to read that “General Mills has spent over a million dollars in the past two years blocking GMO labeling laws.” Could that be right? Even if you’re pro-GMO, shouldn’t people have the right to know what’s in their food?
As any PR expert knows, brands need to be aware that when you make a potentially controversial decision like this, not everyone will like it. And in an age of social media, you’ll hear a lot about it.
Heck, on social media not everyone will like it even when you’re trying to be nice.
One year on New Year’s Eve, Volkswagen had the idea to innocuously ask their fans on Facebook what their brand’s New Year’s resolution should be. They didn’t foresee that they were opening themselves up to a barrage of negativity. One user took the opportunity to detail all the problems they saw with Volkswagen’s environmental policies:17
Volkswagon UK
We hope you had a fantastic New Year. Do you have any resolutions and what would you like to see us do more of this year?
In the past, it wasn’t so easy for consumers to complain, and when we did it was often in a vacuum. When I was twelve, there was no social media. So when I got upset at the lip moisturizer Carmex because someone at summer camp told me it was addictive, I had to buy a stamp to alert them to my woes. In my letter, I accused them of creating a product I couldn’t put down. It moisturized my lips in the short term, but the long-term result was that I was more and more dependent on their product. They wrote me back. And gave me a free tube! If I were twelve today, I can just imagine how many other enraged twelve-year-olds at summer camp I would’ve rounded up to tweet accusatory things at Carmex about our increasingly dry lips.
Ultimately, social media has given us all an easy, free tool to say whatever we want all day long. And sometimes your customers will do just that. If the comments aren’t offensive, let the dialogue take place, and don’t delete the negative content. Be authentic and transparent in your response. And whenever you can, try to turn a negative conversation into a positive one.
Remember how Danielle Brigida of the National Wildlife Federation helped a disgruntled customer happily renew their magazine subscription?
National Wildlife Federation magazine resubscribe success! :) Great magazines for kids. http://ow.ly/1tema
That’s a perfect example of excellence in social media marketing. And one can only hope she gave them some free lip glop.
The SHARE Model for Social Media Success for Every Brand
EXCELLENCE
Fine-tune your social media marketing efforts to reach long-term excellence.
Remember:
• Always ask yourself how you can get followers to want in on your story.
• The real-time nature of social media means that you don’t always know what’s going to happen. Make that a good thing.
• On social media, it’s about rolling with the punches. If your brand makes a social media mistake, own up to it. Fast.
• Social media gives your customers a public place to share their grievances. Sometimes they will do just that. If the comments aren’t offensive, let the dialogue take place, and don’t delete the negative content. Whenever you can, try to turn a negative conversation into a positive one.
If you learn better by video, access a free five-video minicourse at SocialMediaMadeSimple.com.