You are used to celebrities and politicians making devastating mistakes on social media. It never occurs to you that even the biggest corporations can make huge mistakes on the social networks. “No brand is secure from an error or two but coming out of that hole may be an uphill task,” asserted Issa Asad Florida social media expert and businessman for over 18 years. Mr. Asad is also the CEO of Q Link Wireless, Quadrant Holdings, and Bond Media, all located in South Florida.
Here are Issa Asad 4 horrible corporate social media fails which were made by companies you thought could not stoop that low. It just reminds you than as long as you have some careless people in your workforce, mistakes are bound to happen.
1. The Onion Satirical Comment
If you know The Onion, they pride themselves as the kings of satire. It would be so if they never made a mistake of racial comment on a child star. It revolved around Quvenzhane Wallis, a 9-year old actress who was the youngest ever to be nominated for Oscar Awards. Onion went ahead to post on Twitter to call the child actress a bad name. This caused days of uproar on Twitter. This was a comment which was meant to be a jab towards America’s obsession with child stars. It was never interpreted so. It took the intervention of Onion’s CEO who apologised by terming the comment as offensive and crude and not consistent with the brand’s satirical approach. They survived.
2. McDonald’s Center of Social Ridicule
It is a rule of the thump that big brands never mount any successful social media campaigns. Not when there are underpaid and ill-treated employees out there anyway. One time McDonald’s made an announcement that Ronald McDonald would be tweeting on the official McDonald’s Twitter handle. What followed was ugly. They wished they never made such an announcement. Every Twitter user wanted to give Ronald a piece of their bitterness about poor wages and human rights’ abuse by the company. This is bad for a brand which is looking to generate positive comments from followers.
3. KitchenAid In a Political Hotbath
KitchenAid has a great name in the America’s market of appliances. While expecting them to stick with business matters, they made a controversy in 2012. The company’s official Twitter account posted that Obama’s grandmother died after President Obama was elected in 2008 because she knew how disastrous the first term for her grandchild would be. This was not the case. Obama’s grandmother died before he was elected president in 2008. KitchenAid had to come out and apologize. They said that it was an employee who had posted on their official Twitter account instead of using their personal account. It was disastrous but they must have learned their lesson not to poke their noses in to the political arena.
4. Delta Airlines Flies to Ghana
Delta Airlines is a major flight carrier to Ghana but it seems that is all the company knows about the African nation. During the 2014 World cup, USA beat Ghana 2:1. Delta Airlines wanted to praise the home team. They posted the Liberty Statue behind 2 and a giraffe behind 1. They invited factual correction. There are no giraffes in Ghana and Delta Airlines should have known better. They had to turn to damage control but they made it worse by terming “precious” error instead of “previous” error.
These were Issa Asad 4 Horrible Corporate Social Media Fails.
