From strategies to tragedies

Sometimes things don’t go as planned and things can get bad especially when you haven’t planned them at all. Here are two bad examples of using social media.

DiGiorno Pizza

DiGiorno Pizza is an American frozen pizza company which failed using hashtags. #WhyIStayed was a hashtag used by women who were victims of domestic violence. DiGiorno Pizza didn’t know the background of it so the company used it in their Twitter tweed to promote their products saying: “#WhyIStayed You had pizza.” They apologised it later. Source: The Telegraph

I think these kind of things happen when companies try to react quickly to popular things in social media. These kind of disasters could be avoided by making background checking even though it might take a little bit of time.

Best Buy

Cult podcast called “Serial” explored a murder of a girl. The boyfriend who killed the girl used a payphone at a Best Buy in Baltimore, USA. Best Buy tweeted: “We have everything you need. Unless you need a payphone”. It could’ve been a funny tweet but because the case was real, it really wasn’t funny. Best Buy also apologised their tweet later. Source: Daily News

These kind of things also happen when not considering the things that will be published. This tweet obviously was not planned and I think that this kind of tweets and everything else published in social media which are trying to quickly react to topical things should be considered carefully.

Well done!

Even though our task was to find bad examples, I bumped into this article in The Telegraph about a week ago and it made me laugh: 'As a bacon fan I can understand your unadulterated anger' - When supermarkets bite back. Sometimes companies handle their conversation in social media with humour and that is great! It won’t of course work with all feedback but when customers give funny feedback I think it’s more than acceptable for companies to answer in the same way.

- Jenna