Now, like most things in life, no matter how much you plan ahead, sometimes things just go wrong. I am not an absolute pessimist, nor in any way an advocate of Murphy’s Law, but I just no from experience that ‘stuff happens’ and it is best to approach things with a little caution and preparation. With Social Media (and this is probably a true lesson 101 as I can give) it is absolutely essential, for the sake of everyone involved, that actually you think before you act: as the fallout of insufficiently ‘aware’ updates, responses and strategy can be devastating! So to illustrate this, check out my three top examples of when a poorly managed Twitter campaign has absolutely backfired!

#McDStories

In early 2012 McDonald’s, the worlds most well renowned fast-food chain, decided to start a new hashtag as a part of their ongoing Twitter strategy. #McDStories was launched, replacing the existing #MeetTheFamers hashtag, as corporate believed that their emphasis upon the characters that produce the materials for their food would just never give them great returns. So, the new hashtag was intended for their customers to share tales of glee, as they reminisce over the many happy times they have experienced over a McDonalds meal, what could go wrong?

The company apparently only used the hashtag twice before it was hijacked and turned into a “bashtag” for the brand, as it’s openly wide connotations meant that it could be ANY story related to the company, as opposed to it’s previous one which was pretty harmless in comparison. Obviously, trolls are trolls, and they will tear down everything you have tried to build wherever you go, but the problem here was that McDonald’s decided to have their hashtag promoted on the Twitter homepage, which is what destroyed this campaign.

Opponents of McDonald’s seized on #McDStories as an opportunity to document their alleged horror stories at the golden arches, accusing the franchise of making customers physically sick, dishing up a burgers containing finger nails and more. Within an hour Social Media Director Rick Wion admitted that they could see that ‘things weren’t going as planned’ and that they would ‘learn from their experience’ – but for the sake of internet, let’s hope not! Either way, maybe a little bit of though should have gone into this, because surely McDonald’s should be aware by now that they have quite a few critics?

American Apparels Hurricane Sandy Sale!

The fashion outlet for stick-thin hipsters, known as American Apparel, decided that it would try to bring a little bit of humor into the fray when New York was hit by ‘super destructive’ Hurricane Sandy  - which now stands as the second costliest hurricane in American History. Now, I for one appreciated what they did a little bit, because it seemed rather cheeky, but obviously I was on the other side of the Atlantic, with the whole scenario seemingly as distant and real as the film ‘Twister’ did, but I can appreciate why people got angry.

It was just simply a case of bad taste, nothing too extreme, just an advert that read “In case you’re bored in the storm. 20% off everything for next 36 hours”, giving the discount code ‘SANDYSALE’ to be used at the checkout – as I said earlier, it is a bit ‘cheeky’ isn’t it? Some commentators have said that this strategy was a direct parallel to Kenneth Cole‘s attempts to try and manipulate the Arab Spring to his advantage, by sending a Tweet to the #Cairo hashtag stating: “Millions in uproar in #Cairo. Rumour is they heard our new spring collection is now available” – which I actually found quite funny, but still tasteless neverless.

So, as an online marketer, with both the Sandy Sale and #Cairo my thoughts are “yes, that will definitely result in high levels of exposure, I do like the use of current events to give a sense of urgency to their promotion and I do like a bit of humour in the sales”, but that’s just me trying to be objective. Both American Apparel and Kenneth Cole insulted and alienated a very wide audience, resulting in rather grovelling apologies from them both for being so insensitive. So, when you choose to associate your sale with either a disaster, or historical uprising, that is directly resulting in the loss of life, then maybe avoid such controversy altogether?

#Skittles Gives Your Child Cancer

Now, again, this one is pretty much from the same arena as #McDStories, in the sense that it was all due to the corporations poor awareness for ‘trolling‘ that made it a reality, but still, they were not prepared for things going wrong – which is why I have listed it. Essentially, it was not anything out of the ordinary, Skittles - that flavoursome brand of sweet, that reminds me of staying up all night attemptin Super Mario Bros ‘speed-runs‘ in my early teens – just simply tried to intergrate a Twitter feed onto their website, which is a pretty standard practice today, so you wonder where the harm is?

Yet again, people latched on to this opportunity to really take the…’Skittle’ out of the brand, as now any mention of the sweet on Twitter would appear directly on the homepage of the company’s website. Such with hilariously disastrous Tweets such as “You wouldn’t believe it, but skittles are remarkably healthy, if your goal is to get diabetes…” and “#Skittles gives your child cancer”, shattering the brand’s high-cost image with a rather sobering blow of satirical reality.

Now, the problem was not the trolls, because they know no better, but it was Skittles own fault because…wait for it…they did not employ a moderator to get involved in the conversion, nor, more importantly, keep watch of what was actually going onto the site! So, if you can remember the opening paragraph of this article, you may remember that I said that it is best practice to always approach things with “a little caution and preparation”, and it was definitely Skittles lack of preparation that led to this little fiasco occurring.

So there you have it, three and a half examples of rather disastrous Twitter backfires that could have been avoided if a bit more thought, consideration and preparation were put into place before they were actioned. So go forward from here dear friends and remember: the trolls are out to get you!