I was going to wait until Monday to publish this post, but decided that a shorter, abbreviated version would do just fine.
This afternoon Celeb Boutique tweeted what you see at the top of this post. In light of the tragic shootings last night in Aurora, Colorado this created a bad situation.
Immediately this caused an uproar in the social media world, and thousands of Twitterers immediately jumped online to speak their words.
I couldn’t believe what I was witnessing, and here’s how I responded:
Watching @celebboutique‘s follower count drop in realtime because of their classless tweet. #notwinning
— Brian Gardner (@bgardner) July 20, 2012
More than an hour went by before the folks at Celeb Boutique removed their tweet, and followed up with the tweet below among a few others:
We didn’t check what the trend was about hence the confusion, again we do apologise.
— Celeb Boutique (@celebboutique) July 20, 2012
I’m not going to call them out for what happened, or pour gas onto the fire by giving my opinion on the “misunderstanding.”
The thing I really want to focus on is just how powerful social media is, and how easily a company’s integrity can be questioned by a single tweet.
While I see both sides of the reaction, the bottom line is that it’s vital for you and your company to be careful with your public relations and social media efforts.
Things can spread, and they can spread pretty quickly.
Be careful what you do and say online. Or you just might get your company flamed and you just might get shown the door.
Anyway, the real tragedy here is what happend last night in Colorado.
Thoughts and prayers to you all.
Frighteningly tasteless tweet. Too bad that all the humor websites have another example to add to their “worst tweets by companies” lists. Shows the value of hiring PR/social media people who don’t have their heads up their asses.
Yeah, I really find it hard to believe that this was a misunderstanding. Normally I try to give the benefit of the doubt, but ya know…
Anyway, the overall point I wanted to make was how important social media is, and how easily it can take down your company.
Absolutely. I don’t think there’s ever been an easier way for a whole company to embarrass itself and look like fools than social media.
Kind of funny that this very same day there was a post causing some bit of a fuss about how all social media managers should be under 25. I dunno the age of their the person who wrote that, but…
Trying to stay the optimist here, it’s possible that since they are from across the pond, it *was* a misunderstanding. But…
Considering most news outlets are locating the shooting in “Denver” rather than “Aurora”, I suppose it *could* have been inadvertent. But if I saw a trending hashtag that I thought was related to my industry, I think I’d go check out what all the buzz was before I tweeted about it.
At best, they were clueless. At worst, opportunistic and mercenary. The whole truth probably lies somewhere in between.
You are probably spot on there Doug, but the real story here for them is how they respond to this.
It was the social media intern that did it.
I don’t have a hard time believing their story at all. Who among us has never made a mistake because of not checking all the facts before saying something? The hashtag was innocuous – #aurora. Had they latched onto #theatershooting or something, that would be different – a hashtag like that is obvious. When Kenneth Cole did something similar it was obvious that they were playing on the events in Egypt because they referenced the events in the tweet directly. No confusion possible. All this company did was reference the *trending topic*, not what the topic was about.
They’re not even based in the U.S.
They made a rookie mistake. An unfortunate, amateurish mistake. They should have checked to see *why* the word aurora was trending. But I do not believe that this was a publicity stunt. Should they be crucified for it? Probably not… but this being the internet, what they deserve doesn’t matter – the rabid dogs are on the scent, and they won’t stop in the face of logic or reason.
I’m with you on everything you said – and although I want to find fault in the situation, I tried my best to deter the attention and focal point of the post. Guilty or innocent, this brought some hefty exposure to them. I don’t know if it’s good or bad.
And I think you summed it up perfectly in the article, Brian: “it’s vital for you and your company to be careful with your public relations and social media efforts.”
It really doesn’t get more basic, or more true, than that. I don’t know if it’ll be good or bad for them either… but I suspect they’ve learned that very important lesson.
Agreed, probably not intentional. But boneheaded, absolutely. How many people have to talk about something for it to trend? Really, that many talking about Kim K’s dress? If they would have spent 30 seconds researching the hashtag, they would have realized what it was about. This is just common sense. It’s like the wild west with tweeting sometimes – tweet first, ask questions later. And tweeting on a company’s behalf is like news reporting. Get the facts first. (Yeah, Brian Ross of ABC, looking at you on this one.)
Yep, pretty much agree with everything you’ve said George.
Similarly scheduled tweets can make you look like an idiot. Know why something is trending before you jump on the bandwagon and also, if you are going to schedule tweets (I mean writing <140 characters does take a lot of time after all) remember what you have scheduled and stop it when something tragic happens.
http://www.liveworld.com/socialvoice/2012/06/26/avoiding-prescheduling-pitfalls/
A cautionary tale.
“Know why something is trending before you jump on the bandwagon ”
Well said Nick.
We had a very similar issue in Italy a few months ago. In May, a terrible earthquake brought Emilia to its knees. Groupalia, yet another groupon clone, tweeted this (in italian): “Afraid of the earthquake? Let’s runaway to Santo Domingo!” with a related offer.
What happened after that is quite close to what you described here.
I sometimes think it would be nice to build a “wall of shame” website with all these awful tweets, so people can remember who they’re dealing with.
Great blog post Brian, your thoughts are spot on.
Not going to comment any more on the tweet in question, we all think it!!
wow — first, how overly confident of them to think a dress they sell is a reason a topic is trending {even if they intended this to be a funny tweet} – second, how naive to post something without doing your homework first. #Aurora isn’t a common term and you would think it would trigger some checking into first.
… thanks for sharing this. it will now be a constant reminder to check myself before instantly sending off a new tweet.
{by the way, i love how easy it is to read one of your articles. no skimming from me as i enjoy reading each full sentence!}
Thanks Aimee, for that.
I really try my best (and spend a lot of time) making sure my blog is readable and easy on the eyes!
Like the tweeter in question, I’m not US based, so perhaps I can offer an outsider’s perspective. Even in this age of global connectedness, it is a mistake to assume that what is a big, wall to wall news story at a national level in one country has the same weight elsewhere. That’s not to minimize what happened in any way. There is plenty of empathy abroad for what happened. With that word empathy in mind, I would give this individual the benefit of the doubt because frankly I cannot imagine any business owner in their right mind would purposely try something so crass. The tweet looks bad unquestionably, but it behooves us all to not make snap judgements about character. Frankly there’s too much of that on twitter and elsewhere these days. It’s never a smart idea to publicly speculate on why something is trending, and this story shows just how horribly bad things can go by not doing due diligence. But even there, I can see another angle on this. I would never rely on Twitter as a reliable newsfeed. Personally, I never look at the trending feature because usually it’s overflowing with fluff that quite frankly is of little interest to me.
Not sure where the “Aurora shootings” wouldn’t be big news.
It has been covered in the UK and is now moving on to the question of gun control in the US and the memories of the “Columbine shootings”.
If you are using any of the Social Media platforms, you have to think worldwide.
I think Patrick’s point is valid to an extent, but I agree with Keith here. The internet has blurred physical borders and now takes a worldwide approach. There’s no longer an excuse to feign ignorance over an event like the Aurora shootings, when they’ve likely been documented on worldwide news or at least major social media sites that most of us use on a daily basis. I’d hate to think a company would post something this offensive, but it comes down to two things — they either lied after realizing the bad reception to their “joke,” or didn’t even bother to click the trend to read up before posting. Either way, I think what they did was inexcusable.
“The internet has blurred physical borders and now takes a worldwide approach.”
Spot on Marjorie.
When I’m on Facebook or twitter my audience is worldwide, not just tghe UK.
They are based in the UK. One of their mea culpa tweets said they didn’t know what “Aurora” meant.
Well, all the better then to click on the hashtag. It would have taken 4 seconds to figure out what it meant…
Pretty much, which is why I deep down think they knew what was going on.
Like actual news events, social media disasters get more attention than most things. Scorn and disgust seem to be a powerful viral ingredients.
When we had something like this in our country with Martin Bryant killing dozens of people in Tasmania, our Prime Minister at the time used it to ban guns and it worked. http://articles.cnn.com/keyword/martin-bryant
It is amazing how much good and evil can come about from words. Our lips were made for praise, blessing, and encouragement, but too often we speak as fools and must accept the rod of punishment for the moment of folly.
Social media empires can take years to build with consistent words of instructional wisdom. These same empires can come crashing down in an afternoon.
It reminds me why a corporation must have a solid social media strategy, and someone solely devoted to it. It also reminds me why some people explain in their Twitter profile that their “tweets are not necessarily endorsed by their employer.”
Well Its been really amazing that how quickly a company can flamed away their integrity and its really shows the other way of how social media has become stronger and mostly uses by the readers and users and they can make their influence of the company’s goodwill by words.
The joys of social media. It can build a business up as quickly as it can cut it down. It is a stupid mistake that could have been avoided with a few seconds of research. But who can honestly say they have never made a mistake. This one happens to be distasteful and unfortunate that the subject matter attached to #aurora was so horrific. Moral of the story is, double check, and be careful what you post online.
Some Marketer just haven’t got a clue, do they? just a some sort of research would have helped, but no they had to get on the band-wagon. Every one makes mistakes but some can be avoided!
I know this is late, but I thought I’d add that hijacking trending topics is against Twitter’s TOS. If you do see this kind of abuse from the same account, do report it, and they may get removed from Twitter altogether.