Social Media Nightmares

Social Media Nightmares
Case studies on 15 Social Media Disasters

In this guide we provide you with case studies on 15 specific online events, which took the branding universe by surprise. Each case study contains takeaways for business owners.
Social Media Nightmares: Case Study eBook - Simplify360
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For more information about Simplify360 please visit: www.simplify360.com
About Simplify360
Simplify360 is a social intelligence firm, which owns an enterprise grade platform; our latest offerings are Social Marketing Suite for agencies, Social Contact Center for BPOs and Social Command Center for Enterprises. It enables businesses to perform Online Reputation Management, Customer Service, Community Management, Social Media Research & Brand Auditing; Online Sales Lead Generation, and Consumer Sentiment Analysis. To know more about Simplify360 visit www.simplify360.com
Contributors to this eBook
Niketa Chauhan, Marketing Intern, Simplify360 Prashant Jain, Social Media Analyst, Simplify360 Deep Sherchan, CMO Simplify360
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Honda's plans to promote its new car defueled

! You are a Facebook member and so is your company. Your opinion is your voice. But does this make your opinion about your products/services so important that it can cost you your job? Does it mean that you automatically become the opinion leader or the brand ambassador of your company? So what will a brand do if a marketing campaign or a product launch on social media goes very wrong? What happens when the employees start interacting and engaging out of loyalty and defence of their brand, of their product? Will it put their jobs in jeopardy, if their comments are not official and are not sanctioned by the organization? As firms are still adapting to social media and its ways, it is one area worth a study. Lets look at the recent case of a new car release in 2010 Hondas Accord Cross Tour. It was the most awaited and hyped release by Honda. When it finally released after a long wait, the fans were not happy with what they saw. And hence Honda received an overwhelming sea of negative response on its official Facebook page. Here are a couple of comments by fans: Was really hoping this car was going to look like the JDM or the Tourer...but we got neither. Very disappointed!!! -- Ciamaris R. Excellent another hideous car from Honda. This should be a real sales leader in the Early 40's Soccer Mom demographic. How about a legitimate replacement for the S2000 or NSX instead more garbage like this? -- Andrew C. This had to hurt Honda but it did not stop here. The page saw over a thousand comments from unhappy fans. The situation went from bad to worse and the marketing in-charge tried to handle the situation. They replied to comments but with a pinch of their personal views. This was the first official response from Honda: Also here is some quick info on why this car might be the right fit for you. 1. Accord doesnt have 4WD. 2. CR-V doesnt have V6 3. Lower than CR-V, higher than Accord. 4. More room than Accord. 5. More aggressive looks than a Sedan Accord and some might agree, a coupe. 6. Comes with 18inch wheels. 7. Fog Lights Standard
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Readers response: "Booooooo it looks waaaay uglier than the accord." Next Honda shared a few Crosstour Wallpapers and announced that it was for all the unhappy fans to download. For which one of the responses from a reader was: If I had a wallpaper of this car I would have to find a way to clean VOMIT outta my keyboard. -Matt Q. We hear you bud. You made your point. Some people will enjoy this car and this is for them -Honda Blind people can't drive... Matt Q. Organizations must realize today that, though social media is a powerful tool and you can take advantage of it does not mean that you should abuse it. When there were so many negative comments pouring in from fans, the marketing manager should have paused and analysed the situation, instead of jumping right into action by replying, they should have left it alone for a while to gauge the reaction over a longer period of time. However, if you choose to reply to them, you need to be sensitive, listen and be human. Have presence of mind and respond accordingly. Sometimes leaving the negative comments alone would be the best option, else, pay attention to only the worst ones. But Honda began purging them. It was observed that Honda removed a total of 28 comments from the thousands that were posted. They announced that only those comments that contained profanity or had inappropriate content were removed. They also said that the comments were not removed simply on the bases that they were spreading a negative opinion. There was one positive comment however that was deleted:
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Honda clarified that Eddie Okubo is a manager in Honda Product Planning. His post was removed for two reasons: 1) He did not first state that he is a Honda employee and that his posting is his personal -- not Honda's -- opinion. 2) He is not a spokesperson for Honda. Takeaway: Honda is not the only brand that has been hit on its head by negative comments. If you have not experienced this yet, then you must watch out, your turn might be coming soon. So here are a few tips on what brands must keep in mind while handling such situations: 1. Do not delete negative comments 2. Keep a posting policy. The Burson-Marsteller Facebook Comment and Posting Policy is a good example for reference. View the policy here: http://www.bursonmarsteller.com/About_Us/Pages/policy.aspx 3. Reply promptly and on a public stream 4. Set a tone for your posts 5. Let people speak 6. Use filters on public posts 7. Stay on guard, use Google alerts Last but not the least, always keep a crisis communication plan. If you do not have one yet, get one!
Ref:http://aol.it/xjBOY
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When a simple tweet shook Bing!

However good your intentions are, but if you dont express them right, you will end up in a mess! This is exactly what happened with Bing, when they tried to market their brand by cashing on the Japanese earthquake incident. Bing received some really derogatory tweets on their promotion activity which literally tore their brand image apart.
And surprisingly, Bing after 7 hours of this incident and when a very abusive hash tag started gaining traction on twitter reacted and sent an apology tweet from its official twitter account. Bing people could have never imagined that they would also feel the aftershock of the earthquake in Japan!
Things you should not do to avoid such situations; 1. While creating content for posting on your social media channels about natural Calamities, social issues, crimes, never sound self oriented and marketing focused. 2. If something unwanted happens, then be very swift in responding to the situation, or you will end up in missing the bus.
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Hackers take a bite of Burger King!

On Feb 18th, 2013, Burger King woke up to news saying that the fast food chain had been sold to its competitor, McDonalds and the official twitter feed of the brand also started posting pro-McDonalds messages. Hackers took control of their official twitter account and went ahead and changed the name and image to that of McDonalds. There was a tweet which said: This is why we were sold to @McDonalds! All of our employees crush and sniff Percocet in the bathrooms With people sending amusing tweets about the brand and the hacker group posting sarcastic tweets, Burger King was lost, as the account remained under hackers control for hours.
And while this was happening, twitter users took a moment to tweet and laugh at what happened with Burger King. The twitter account remained in control of the hackers for hours. Then, twitter announced that the account had been suspended.
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See how McDonalds reacted to the incident!
Takeaways 1. Keep the social media credentials of the brands official account as secure and unpredictable as you can. 2. Access the channels through a secure and trusted network (never from a caf/restaurant). 3. And, even then if such a thing happens; the account should be suspended, like Burger King did.
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Dominos was sleeping!

On April 13th 2009 (Monday), a video posted by a Dominos employee on YouTube became an Internet sensation hurting the overall brand image of Dominos. Things got worse, as Dominos failed to respond in time, thus missing a chance to mitigate the issue. The video contained one of Dominos employees preparing a sandwich for delivery while putting cheese up his nose, nasal mucus on the sandwiches, and violating every sanitary and healthcode standard. The video was followed by a narration from another employee, which went like this:
In about five minutes itll be sent out on delivery where somebody will be eating these, yes, eating them, and little did they know that cheese was in his nose and that there was some lethal gas that ended up on their salami, Kristy said. Now thats how we roll at Dominos.
Within a few days, the video received more than 200,000 views fuelling anti-Dominos chatter online. Meanwhile, Dominos went ahead identifying the employees in the video and took action against them. On the other hand, the views on the video increased rapidly to millions and yet there was no official response online, from the Dominos team. Finally, Dominos responded on YouTube with a video response and apologized for the action of its employees.
Dominos Pizza President Patrick Doyle Apologizes for Employees
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! Takeaway This case is a nightmare for any brand. To prevent such situations, brands must monitor every single conversation around it. Also, the delay in identifying and responding to the issue indicates that social media teams should have a very quick turnaround time when it comes to responding to an issue. Social media is driven by real-time actions. This means that companys social media team needs to be agile and should actively participate in the conversations and create specific contingency measures, in case required. Ref: http://bit.ly/ZhDXBv
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Sandy storms GAP!

On 29th October, 2012, as Hurricane Sandy was making its way towards most of the eastern seaboard of the United States, GAP decided to tag along with many other well-wishers on Twitter, and made an incredible error in their Tweet. Instead of showing empathy towards the victims, GAP went on to tag the tweet with one of its promotional ads - Well be doing lots of Gap.com shopping today. How about you? In addition to this, it was tagged with a check-in into a place named FRANKENSTORM APOCALYPSE. As expected, people on Twitter immediately responded towards the insensitivity shown by the brand.
As a result, GAP responded with an apology tweet, clarifying that it was not to be taken otherwise. GAP was not the only brand to ride on to the opportunity of Hurricane Sandy. Many other brands like American Apparel were heavily criticized for their intentions of cashing on the calamity. Takeaways During the time of natural calamity like earthquakes, hurricanes and tsunamis, the sentiment of people around the world is very sensitive to victims of the disaster. At these times, brands should act morally and show empathy towards the victims and not try to cash on it. GAPs error was in trying to play around with words and tag their promotions with the message for which they had to pay the price. It is recommended that brands show genuine solidarity towards the public and not try to drive sales at such times. Ref: http://on.mash.to/V8U3Aj ; http://s360.us/14OCBqs
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Bob Parsons hurts GoDaddys image!

! Social Media can make you or break you! And, those who think that doing something completely insane and then boasting about it on social media are the classic examples of how one can axe their own foot. Bob Parsons, the flamboyant CEO of internet domain names provider GoDaddy.com fell prey to his own so called heroic task. One clip showed Parsons on vacation, bagging an elephant. An earlier video from 2009 shows him in pursuit of a leopard that ultimately was shot dead. The clips were posted by Bob Parsons himself and within days went viral, and the chief executive received a lot of criticism from the masses. PETA in its official statement said: PETA is closing its account with Go Daddy and urges everyone to follow suit Peta also expressed that, Parsons is hiding behind the lame claim that killing
elephants helps farmers in Africa whose crops are damaged by the animals. In fact, there are ample effective and nonlethal methods to deter elephants from crops, including using chili-infused string and beehives on poles to create low-cost "fences." Instead of coming up with flimsy excuses for killing these highly intelligent and social animals, Parsons should use his wealth to fund humane solutions to human/elephant conflicts.
But Parsons went ahead and gave a very lame excuse to express his viewpoint "I think that most people when they see this video will understand what's happening," he continued. These people are on the brink of starvation; they need their crops and need to eat. Elephants are not endangered and probably there are too many of them. A lot of people are up in arms about this. Their hearts are in the right place but they don't understand the situation. If they'd go on one of my trips to Zimbabwe, they'd understand." Takeaways: 1. One should realize that when you are representing an organization, your every move is being watched and covered, be it personal or professional. Bob Parsons case is a classic example to executives of every organization, that their own wrongdoings might injure their brand. Image Credit: mashable; Link: http://fxn.ws/hDz2h4
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Google Engineer Leaks Memo

! Social media has also transformed corporate communication practices. Tools such as Facebook, Google+ and Twitter that are used to connect with friends and family are now used by organizations to collect responses from customers and users directly, quickly and affordably. But managing social accounts in a corporate scenario is still a challenge faced by many. There have been many cases in the past, where an employee has put his job in jeopardy by commenting, posting or even tweeting about the organization he/she works for that should not have been spoken about in a public forum. Though companies have learnt how to take precautionary measures about creating and nurturing social media culture within organizations and implemented policies to support the same, yet we still see many such cases. Even when an employee realises his/her mistake early it is already too late on social media. Someone from your friends network would have already shared it or posted it on other platforms. Before you know it, it would have gone viral online. As we all know, it was very aptly once said think before you speak, read before you think. We saw the same case with Steve Yegge, a Google employee who writes an internal blog about how Googles culture and ideology (current employee) is different from Amazons philosophy (exemployee). But when the post went public by mistake he put his job in jeopardy as in his post he slammed Amazon for doing everything wrong and even revealed few confidential products of Google and Amazon that were not known to public yet.
The post details out a comparative illustration of different platforms built by Apple, Facebook, Amazon, Microsoft and Google. Steve went on to explain technically how Facebook was the closest any other organization could get and how Microsoft even after its efforts, failed and still keeps trying. He even discusses in length about Amazons culture services-first fashion followed by Jeff Bezos, an infamous micro-manager at Amazon. He goes further by explaining how the internal management works at Amazon and how Google is culturally advanced instead.
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Though the original post was pulled down from Google+ it had already gone viral on other social networking site. One of his friends attempts to keep the post public with Steves and Googles permission. He states: Google's openness to allow us to keep this message posted on its own social network is, in my opinion, a far greater asset than any SaaS platform. In the end, a company's greatest asset is its culture, and here, Google is one of the strongest companies on the planet. It was yet another internal post which people from related communities appreciated, but others also liked the post, especially for its bold, frank, clear and honest writing. With almost all readers requesting Google not to fire Steve and marking it as one of The best articles I've ever read about, this post is yet another example on how social media can either make or break your brand. It also shows how employees can jeopardise their jobs by posting some information in the public domain that is not approved. But whats note worthy here is that Google allowed the post to stay up. Whether for strategic reasons or to reinstate the brand value and its power on the minds of the masses through this innocent mistake. Or is Google really an open-culture organization that believes every employee is entitled to his/her opinion and that by building a networking tool like Google+ the sole intention was to allow individuals to connect and share their experiences, thoughts and information quickly, freely and affordably? Read the complete story here: https://plus.google.com/112678702228711889851/posts/eVeouesvaVX.
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McDonalds' Twitter dreams thrashed: #mcdstories

! In January 2012, McDonalds had to face a similar assault like that against Starbucks, when it initiated a campaign around the hash-tag #McDstories.
"When u make something w/ pride, people can taste it," McD potato supplier #McDstories
In response to the tweet above, people started posting horror stories about McDonalds. For example:
The disaster went to coin a special social media term itself, called #bashtags. A bashtag is a term used when users hijack a hash tag and use it to express their dissatisfaction towards the initiator; similar to what happened when McDonald's tried to start a promotional hash tag (#McDStories) After recognizing the disaster, the company quickly brought down its campaign. But little did they know that once a hash tag is created it lives forever. People still use the hash tag to share their stories about McDonalds.
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Later McDonalds social media director Rick Wion issued a statement:

Last Thursday, we planned to use two different hashtags during a promoted trend #meetthefarmers and #mcdstories. While #meetthefarmers was used for the majority of the day and successful in raising awareness of the Supplier Stories campaign, #mcdstories did not go as planned. We quickly pulled #mcdstories and it was promoted for less than two hours. Within an hour of pulling #McDStories the number of conversations about it fell off from a peak of 1600 to a few dozen. It is also important to keep those numbers in perspective. There were 72,788 mentions of McDonald's overall that day so the traction of #McDStories was a tiny percentage (2%) of that. With all social media campaigns, we include contingency plans should the conversation not go as planned. The ability to change midstream helped this small blip from becoming something larger.
Takeaways 1. Understand your brand and understand your customers. Its crucial for top brands to carry out a regular brand sentiment analysis. This gives a proper perspective to the social media campaign manager to avoid pitfalls like the one above. 2. Before starting a campaign, always take into account its pitfalls and prepare for worst case scenarios.
Ref: http://read.bi/xnVqfp
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Microsoft gets personal on twitter, insults Ann Coulter!

Robert Reich (A Berkeley professor and former US Secretary of Labor) on 23 September 2012, simply tweeted his excitement to meet his granddaughter and about his panel discussion with Ann Coulter (an American conservative social and political commentator, eight-time best-selling author, syndicated columnist, and lawyer), And somebody from Microsoft official twitter account sent a teasing tweet making fun of Ann Coulter! Whoa! What?
(Image Courtesy: Twitter) To the tweet Microsoft replied: @RBReich your granddaughters level of discourse and policy > those of Ann Coulter, The tweet was later deleted and Microsoft issued a public statement to the Politico website saying Tweet obviously is not an official statement by the company. One of the people who manages our corporate twitter account thought he was tweeting from their personal twitter account on Saturday morning but tweeted from our corporate account by mistake, Microsoft spokeswoman Christina Pearson said. That person immediately realized his mistake and deleted the tweet from our corporate account. We have taken steps to help ensure that this kind of mistake doesnt happen again.
Quiet Amused by the incident, Robert Reich later on 26th September tweeted;
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(Image Courtesy: Twitter) Unperturbed by the incident, Ann Coulter simply replied to the Daily Caller saying; "Good to see Microsoft is employing people experienced in state-of-the-art social media." Takeaways 1. Individuals who are in charge of managing social media accounts of their organizations or the clients in case of agencies, should be super cautious when tweeting, 2. And, when it comes to sensitive political matters, one should always refrain from checking out profiles of political figures or celebrities from the brands account, as one wrong/random click can wreak havoc on your brands reputation. Reference (Politico - http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0912/81577.html )
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Nestle caught in a twit storm with Greenpeace

In 2011 Greenpeace International successfully persuaded Nestle to discontinue all suppliers who were notoriously involved in supplying palm oil by rainforest deforestation in Indonesia. Greenpeace had found that Nestle was one of the largest firms that sourced palm oil from Sinar Mas who used to also supply to Duta Palma an Indonesian palm oil producer who was responsible for destroying the rainforests without any approval from the Ministry of Forestry in Indonesia. The campaign began in March 2010, when Greenpeace launched a social media attack on Nestle. They uploaded a video on YouTube, where the Have a break, have a Kit Kat slogan was changed to have a Break? Give the Orang-utans a break. The video showcases how every bite of Nestls Kit Kat bleeds the blood of orang-utans. (Video link: http://vimeo.com/10236827) Nestle in response had the video withdrawn from YouTube and this led to some real change in the course of events, as seen later. Greenpeace then uploaded the video on another social media site, Vimeo, and received 78,500 views within just couple of hours of upload. This turn of events went viral. As more and more people spread the video through Facebook and Twitter, Nestle began to see an ocean wave of criticism coming its way. It started initially by controlling and threatening to sue over the use of the Nestle Killer logo created by Greenpeace and used by all supporters and fans. Taking this campaign one step ahead with perfect planning, Greenpeace combined both their online and the offline events to increase their supporters all over the world. The supporters pressurised Nestle to stop sourcing palm oil from suppliers who destroyed rainforests and boycotted the use of all of their products. Offline the activists ran a campaign during Nestles annual shareholders meeting on April 15, 2011 where guests were greeted by supporters dressed as orang-utans who had lost their homes and were refugees here now.
Inside the venue banners were dropped from the ceiling with a message to stop using palm oil sourced from suppliers who destroy rainforests in Indonesia.
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They also had a billboard display of all the tweets sent out by supporters outside the venue while the meeting was still going on. During this whole time the video had already received over 1.5 million views and shares on social media.
In February 2011 Greenpeace achieved a milestone when the Golden Agri Resources, Indonesias largest producer of palm oil, launched an ambitious Forest Conservation Policy. Nestle also responded by making a promise within just two months of the campaign, that had gone viral on social media (Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Flickr and Vimeo) and supporters also emailing, calling them and even boycotting their products. They also sent out a strong message to the oil and paper industry that rainforest destruction was not an acceptable practice in todays global market and suspended all suppliers who were associated with this activity. This campaign later saw brands like Kraft, Cadbury, Unilever and Mars also complying with the policy. Each one of them made amendments to their sourcing policy to save the rainforests which were also the habitat of endangered species like orang-utans. Takeaway: The power of social media is far greater than any isolated marketing campaign. The combined efforts of the online and offline campaigns led to the dramatic success of the campaign and saw the delivery of the message directly to Nestle. Most important, it connected supporters from across the world and led to a mass movement in different countries.
Ref: http://vimeo.com/10236827 http://www.greenpeace.org/kitkat
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When Salman Rushdie slammed Facebook on Twitter

Facebook has been in the news for various reasons lately. Whether its privacy policy issues or the good old argument about which is a superior networking site, between Facebook and Twitter. In 2011 Facebook saw yet another case involving Salman Rushdie, a British Indian novelist and essayist who has also won the Booker Prize for his second novel Midnight's Children. Facebook deactivated his account over suspicions that the account was not genuine. Facebook requested for identity proof, a photograph and a copy of his passport from Rushdie. He submitted the documents as requested but the issue caught some heat when Rushdie was denied the right to use his name as he wished to. Instead he was asked to use the full name as mentioned on his passport. When Rushdie requested Facebook to reconsider this, explaining that he was well known amongst his friends and fans as Salman Rushdie, and not as Ahmed Rushdie, he received no response. He then decides to share his frustration on Twitter. Lets look at the exact course of events on Twitter in detail: Rushdie started with a tweet describing why his account was deactivated in the first place and how Facebook had requested for identity proof for account verification and reactivation.
Next when Rushdie sent Facebook a copy of his photo and passport, he went on to explain how Facebook requested him to use his name as mentioned on the passport.
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He further explained to Facebook that he was rarely known as Ahmed Rushdie; instead his friends and family know him as Salman Rushdie, and hence he would like to use the same name on Facebook.
On receiving no response and having his account reactivated with the name Ahmed Rushdie in spite of the requests made, he slammed Facebook as morons and unfortunately directed the comment to an unverified Twitter account of Mark Zuckerberg.
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In the quest to find the real Zuckerberg he tried a couple more handles and hash tags over the next several tweets but unfortunately failed. Even @finkd was an unverified account.
Frustrated to have still not have received any response he tried to grab public attention. He drew parallels with the fact that if the same thing had occurred with other famous historical figures then how humorous it would sound today.
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With over 114,000 twitter followers it was very evident that this was soon to become viral. Rushdie then took it yet another step further by mentioning a couple of interesting public figures who were better known to the world by their middle names. Facebook realised that this could damage its reputation severely if not amended immediately. Hence, to save itself from any further embarrassment on Twitter, they reconsidered their decision within two hours. Facebook also sent in an official apology within the next one hour.
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Rushdie declared that he had been successful in saving his identity and thanked the Twitterverse for helping him! Surprising as it may seem, it is still not an unbelievable end to the tale. Today there are numerous social media platforms and we see users switching between them seamlessly. Just like Rushdie, who took to Twitter when he was frustrated with Facebooks service. The greatest challenge faced by any social media marketer today is how to engage and keep his readers happy and how to keep them coming back for more. As the battle between these two social networking giants still continues, lets wait and watch what is in it for us! Ref: http://on.mash.to/td6aKp
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Snickers accused of paying celebrities to tweet for them!

! Like Twitters nature, every promotional activity should be transparent and open in its intent. This is what we are going to learn when we finish reading this article! On 24 January, 2012, Rio Ferdinand, who plays for the Manchester United Football Club, tweeted a picture taken of him eating a Snickers chocolate bar.
(Courtesy: thenextweb.com) Twitter users found it really embarrassing that a sports person who they admired was brazenly promoting a brand without openly admitting that he did so.
(Courtesy: Twitter) UKs Office of Fair Tradings (OFT) has a guideline that celebrities should make it clear that they are endorsing a particular brand. By looking at the picture, one can easily predict that the celeb would have been paid a handsome amount.
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! Jordan and Ian Bottham also tweeted images of themselves eating Snickers over the weekend. When promoting a particular brand, celebrities should clearly mention that they are endorsing a brand or fans will treat their future tweets as if they are promotions too! Takeaways 1. While associating a brand with a celebrity on Twitter or any social media platform, brands should ensure that both, the brand and the celebrity declare at the outset that it is an official marketing activity. Because, for the celebrity it might result in losing their follower count and for the brand as it happened with Snickers UK, legal action can be taken. 2. Twitter is like an ice floor, once you slip you will keep slipping until you decide to stop and lie down quietly. Hash tags on Twitter are just like that icy floor a handful of users commenting #fail along with your brand name can easily destroy your hard earned reputation overnight.
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#spreadthecheer campaign made Starbucks sad!

On 17th December 2012, Starbucks UK encouraged its followers to send some holiday cheers using a hash tag #spreadthecheer, something that every brand encourages their fans/followers to do. There was no malpractice or hidden agenda here. This is a standard practice on social media. But Starbucks social media team was in for a shock when they started receiving skewed tweets related to their tax and labor practices. Moreover, some of these in appropriate tweets made it to a large screen installed at Londons Natural History Museum, where the company sponsors the ice rink.
The outcry from the people was mainly because of the revelation of the low amount of taxed paid by Starbucks in the UK besides their high earnings, which was made public on the news. Starbucks has made headlines in the UK recently when it was disclosed that the company paid just 8.5 million ($13.8 million) in taxes in Britain, despite sales of 3 billion ($4.9 billion). - Mashable
Takeaways There was virtually no way for Starbucks to prevent this disaster because there was nothing they could have done to change the peoples sentiment towards the brand. When your brand is associated with malpractice in society, it is bound to receive huge reactions from the public, especially on public issues like tax and labor practices. But they could have avoided the whole saga if the social media team had been listening to the public sentiment towards the brand. The sentiment could have given an indication towards the recent stories Starbucks was involved in and how the people felt about it. That way, they could have been able to postpone the campaign or time it better. Ref http://huff.to/UvA36X http://s360.us/14OEnI0
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Thomas Cook roasted by Thomas Cook

Social media is a powerful tool today, Facebook alone sees over 1 billion users per day. It would be foolish to think that social media is not a medium to deliver a brand message, promote a product or engage your customers through various contests and campaigns. But what if your social media campaign backfires, or even worse, someone targets your brand directly through negative publicity. Lets look at the recent story of Thomas Cook: A travel agency and also a 26 year old New Yorker with the same name! A 26 year old from New York had his name coincidently match exactly with the brand name of one of worlds best travel agency, Thomas Cook. He made a bold request on Facebook asking for a free holiday to Paris as a compensation for sharing the same name. He requested this for he was being ridiculed by his friends whether he had received any trip from Thomas Cook or not. So he thought why not request a trip for real. Here is the original post
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This wasnt good for Thomas Cooks brand, and it was not going to get any better. Soon after the company replied to him politely denying of any such offer that could be made, his competitors saw an opportunity. An intelligent marketing executive of lowcostholidays.com replied to the guy within 15 days of his request that if they were in place of Thomas Cook (travel Agency) then they would have definitely offered him the trip and even now they are ready to offer him that free trip. In fact they extended a free trip to him along with his friend. Here is a snapshot of the message from lowcostholidays.com
An excellent example of how a competitor can take full advantage of a situation that has gone so wrong for your company on social media. Takeaway: Social networking sites have given everyone a voice. And its a fact that every good company is worth its salt. The best practices on social media, which are transparency, authenticity, engagement and listening, are not just the buzz words; these are the realities of doing businesses today. It should be noted that though marketing campaigns and plans can be successful, but a single negative comment can go viral if some due diligence and online marketing hygiene checks are not paid attention to. Sometimes it can even save some million dollars to your company! Ref: http://www.olery.com/the-top-5-social-media-fails-travel-2012/
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United breaks Guitars

During a trip on United Airlines in March 2008, Canadian Musician Dave Carroll and his band, Sons of Maxwell, underwent a harsh customer service experience which damaged their guitar worth $3500. This is a classical case of customer service going haywire, but what happened after the event was much more unique and trend setting.
After 9 months of failed requests to get refunds from United Airlines, made Dave and his band deeply frustrated. Upon realizing that they were fighting a losing battle, they went on to compose 3 songs related to their bad experience with the United Airlines customer support, which went on to put the brand in shame. The videos were posted on YouTube, they became an instant success and has garnered 13 million views till now!
So after nine months it came down to a series of emails with Ms. Irlweg and, despite asking to speak to her supervisor, our conversations ended with her saying United would not be taking any responsibility for what had happened and that that would be the last email on the matter. My final offer of a settlement of $1200 in flight vouchers, to cover my salvage costs repairing the Taylor, was rejected. Note from Dave on his blog
The video went on to become number one hit song on the iTunes store in the week following its release. In response to the video, Rob Bradford, Uniteds Managing Director of Customer Solutions, called the video excellent. He reached out to Carroll, apologized and requested to use the video internally for training purpose. United than went on to provide $1200 flight vouchers to Carroll, which he declined, requesting to donate to charity. Then the company donated $3000 to the Thelonious Monk Institute of Jazz as a gesture of goodwill.
Takeaways This is a unique case of where customer went to extra length to get their refund and fight for their rights. Not everyone has such patience and creativity to tackle the issue. On the other hand, this case demonstrates the strength of social media and the impact it can have on a brand. The response helped to give voice to many such customers who had faced similar experience with the United Airlines.
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! In social media, its not about one issue; its always a result of combined issues, which results in a mass reaction. If United Airlines had not been manhandling the luggage and had responded properly to the customers, the video response from the customer would not have gained much traction. Hence its always important to respond to customer queries and complaints, instead of leaving them unattended or misguided.
Ref: http://bit.ly/yWaWKf http://s360.us/11D6kwthttp://s360.us/14OJA2w
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Social Media Nightmares

Case studies on 15 Social Media Disasters

Social Media Nightmares: Case Study eBook - Simplify360

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Contributors to this eBook

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Honda's plans to promote its new car defueled

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When a simple tweet shook Bing!

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Hackers take a bite of Burger King!

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See how McDonalds reacted to the incident!

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Dominos was sleeping!

Dominos Pizza President Patrick Doyle Apologizes for Employees

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Sandy storms GAP!

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Bob Parsons hurts GoDaddys image!

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Google Engineer Leaks Memo

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McDonalds' Twitter dreams thrashed: #mcdstories

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Later McDonalds social media director Rick Wion issued a statement:

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Microsoft gets personal on twitter, insults Ann Coulter!

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Nestle caught in a twit storm with Greenpeace

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When Salman Rushdie slammed Facebook on Twitter

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