5 disastrous social media PR blunders
When it comes to all the Internet mishaps out there, the social media PR faux pas is often the most entertaining, and as soon as it’s out there, it’s already too late.
In one specific way, social media customer service is kind of like working for the CIA. Your successes mostly go unnoticed. Your blunders, well, that’s a different story altogether.
We list our top favourite disastrous social media blunders of all time.
5. Hitting the hay
When stories break, it’s always a good idea to check the pre-scheduled posts to make sure that what would have been an innocent post doesn’t suddenly become a suspect post.
That is exactly what Tesco failed to do when their horsemeat scandal story had reached maximum publicity. After an investigation showed that Tesco burgers contained traces of horsemeat, Tesco accidentally released a pre-scheduled tweet saying that they were “hitting the hay”.
An unfortunate use of words, and many of their followers believed it to be a pretty distasteful joke. Tesco later issued an apology.
4. US Airways
Possibly the least safe for work story in the history of social media PR blunders has to go to US Airways and one of the more disturbing images online (no, you won’t find a link to it here.)
It started with what would be a relatively typical conversation on Twitter between the US Airways social media team and a disgruntled customer. Customer complains. US Airways apologises. Customer complains again.
From there it took a rather different turn, when one of the US Airways team – presumably accidentally – pictured a pretty disturbing image, along with the message to submit their feedback through the link.
Without going into too much detail, it involved a woman, a model Boeing 777, and not many clothes. You can Google the story if you feel compelled to learn more. Here is a [very] pixelated screenshot.
What it intentional? Probably not. Anyone who works in social media will recognise that this was unfortunate accident involving the Copy & Paste function.
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3. MLK Day 25% of Everything Black
There have been plenty of ill-advised attempts of “honouring” Martin Luther King Day, and Global Village Duluth is certainly up there.
The Minnesota store decided that to honour the day that they would offer “25% off everything black”. Needless to say, it didn’t go over too well with social media users.
Not only did it demonstrate that the store significantly misunderstood what Martin Luther King stood for, the foolhardy post is still present on their Facebook page today.
2. Susan’s X-Rated party
For those that don’t know, singer Susan Boyle won the UK’s Britain’s Got Talent competition in 2009. In 2012, during the run up to her latest album release, her PR team came up with the hashtag #SusanAlbumParty to promote the release on Twitter.
If you haven’t figured out the problem with that hashtag yet, send your CV to her PR team, they may have a job for you. Try typing it all into lowercase and see if something unsavoury jumps out at you.
Needless to say, the hashtag was soon changed to SusanBoylesAlbumParty, but it was too late. The jokes had only just begun.
1. McDStories
When McDonalds attempted to start a hashtag campaign on Twitter using the hashtag #McDStories to allow people to tell their own stories of their McDonalds experience, they probably had no idea that the majority of those stories would not be painting McDonalds is a particularly good light.
Within hours of promoting the hashtag, thousands of stories appeared. Most of them were horror stories, such as how the fast food restaurant turned vegetarian after eating there and how someone found a fingernail in their Big Mac.
McDonalds should have realised that with this sort of campaign, people are more likely to share horror stories than positive ones. And if you know you have your fair share of horror stories, try and avoid directly prompting people to share them to publicly!
The McDStories hashtag is still used today to share unpleasant experiences with the company.
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