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KitchenAid Twitter Debacle – Keep This From Happening To You!

The first presidential debate of the 2012 campaign was held in Denver last night. KitchenAid accidentally chimed in with a wee bit of an off-color joke. Naturally, their quip about President Obama’s deceased grandmother was none too well-received.

How can we keep social media interns and junior people from accidentally tweeting from the big important corporate account? Separate devices! One for your personal social media accounts, and another for the corporate accounts from which you’ve been trusted to tweet. Watch the video above, and let me know what you think in the comments below.

Kitchenaid Twitter Mess

A few other items of note: see the jpeg below that Steve Hartman tweeted me – a huge transparent plea by an employee of KitchenAid to the media. I do not have firsthand knowledge of what happened here, but my guess is a lower level employee made the mistake, and Cynthia Soledad is working her butt off to make it better. So hats off to Cynthia for diving in.

Also, it is clear to me that, when your communications snafu reaches CNN’s front page, then you really screwed up!

Here’s another story from AdWeek.

Remember the 25-second rule, people! (yes, I’ve upgraded from the 5-second rule). Review everything about your tweet for 25 seconds before committing it to the public domain.

Thoughts?
 

Honest Mistake? Or Capitalizing on Tragedy and Twitter Trending Topics?

Aurora

Was this just an honest mistake? A plucky young intern that just didn’t know what they were doing? Or was this an attempt to make news, to capitalize on tragedy and the resultant Twitter Trending Topic? You be the judge. I don’t even know what to think anymore.

It’s exceedingly hard to imagine anyone would purposely tweet this on a day like today. (For posterity’s sake, there was a horrible mass shooting in Aurora CO at the premiere of the newest Batman movie).

The tweet embedded, until they delete it:

In an admittedly pointless attempt to keep this sort of thing from ever happening again, spread it around like mad on Twitter, Reddit, Facebook and LinkedIn, and make this company feel shame. And I’d like to hear what you think in the comments below? What was the true intent of the Tweeter here?
 
 
UPDATE – apologetic tweets from Celeb Boutique

Aurora

 

My final take: it appears to have been one big colossal mistake. Their PR is not based in the United States. While this tragedy is likely a worldwide story at this point, it’s entirely possible their social media people had not heard about what happened.

For readily apparent reasons, I advise you to not ride the coattails of a Twitter Trending Topic without understanding why the term or phrase is trending. Things trend for both good and bad reasons. Once click on the trending topic “Aurora” would have shed some light on why it was trending. Sometimes it’s hard not to go 500 miles an hour when using social media. My best advice is to be extremely careful with your brand, even if it takes an extra 60 seconds to do some rudimentary research.

Faith in humanity: at least partially restored. Thoughts and prayers go out to the people of Aurora, CO.