Corporate America just can’t seem to get social media or pr
Apparently an employee of Chryslers digital agency accidentally dropped the proverbial ‘F-Bomb’ accidentally in a Tweet. Though I don’t have all the details, I think it was intended as a direct message on another account, but went out as a public message. The agency fired the employee, and Chrysler fired the agency.
Ed Garsten of Chrysler explains the situation on Chryslers blog here.
I was asked by someone in PR the other day what I think the best approach would have been.
I said it sounded like another typical Corporate PR overreaction. The easiest, fastest and best thing they could have done in this specific situation would have been to simply delete that one tweet and offer no comment or if absolutely needed, 1 short apology - case closed!
With social media, once you’ve developed your strategy and tactics including specific campaigns you should have already thought of potential blowback. No one is loved by everyone and nothing one does is viewed as ok by everyone. someone will always object. EXPECT it to happen.
When it happens ignore it. In rare circumstances, issue one single apology (think about it carefully first), then stick to that. Worst thing you can do is engage in a downward spiral like Absolut did in the Mexico/US map fiasco, with apology after apology. All it amounted to in the end was a lot of wasted PR time.
No one will remember a silly incident you just move on and don’t dwell on it.
In the case of Chrysler, admittedly I don’t have all the details yet. But Twitter isn’t exactly for kiddies, and anyway an F-bomb can be deleted in a few minutes, no damage done. All Chrysler ended up doing was looking very un-cool to the majority of customers on Twitter who would have felt my first suggestion would have been the most appropriate.
If you goof on a certain media channel, those are the people you need to worry about, not children watching Saturday morning cartoons.
Simple advice. If you’re doing social media marketing you need to have a back bone!
![[Post to Twitter]](../../../../wp-content/plugins/tweet-this/icons/tt-twitter-big1.png){kind=icon}
3 responses so far ↓
1 Tom H C Anderson // Mar 22, 2011 at 8:35 am
PS. Here is the original Tweet that went out to their 7,500 followers and was deleted when they found out, though Re-Tweets still exsist:
“@chryslerautos: I find it ironic that Detroit is known as the #motorcity and yet no one here knows how to fucking drive”
Interestingly that account now has 8,885 followers, so it looks like the PR agency deserves a bonus LOL
So typical
2 Toby Bloomberg - @tobydiva // Mar 26, 2011 at 12:07 pm
Tom -
What surprised me was the agency guy was insensitive to the values of the brand. If he were that remark might never have been posted under anyone’s avatar .. brand or personal.
3 Candice // Apr 5, 2011 at 9:44 am
I followed your links back to the original post that set off the firestorm for Absolut Vodka. The writer, Laura Martinez, unlike Absolut, failed to consider her audience.
I understood that her comment was tongue-in-cheek. I also understood why her American readers overreacted. Telling a largely American audience that the US-Mexico border should be returned to what it was back before the Mexican-American War is similar to, for example, a southerner telling an audience that consists of a large percentage of African-Americans that in an Absolut World, the south would have won the Civil War. The similarity lies in the writer’s lack of sensitivity toward her audience, not the possible consequences of the cited event.
As for the Chrysler situation, I think both they and their former PR company overreacted. The employee behaved foolishly, but who hasn’t?
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