THE DAY YOUR BRAND

EXPLODED

TERROR FROM THE INTERWEBS!

Your Brand Attacked By Social Media!

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The Day Your Brand ExplodedHow Social Media Makes or Breaks

Your Organization

Graham Garner • @garnergraham

Applebee’s and the Cheap Tip

Applebee’s and the Cheap Tip

•Pastor Alois Bell dines at Applebee’s with

nine others

•Automatic 18% gratuity added

•Bell crosses out tip, writing a “0″ in its place

•Writes: “I give God 10%. Why do you get

18%?” Signs it “Pastor Alois Bell”

Applebee’s and the Cheap Tip

•Waitress Chelsea Welch posts photo on

Reddit, a news aggregator site

•Bell gets a lot of hate mail, complains to

Applebee’s that her reputation was ruined

•Per company policy, Welch is fired

•Pastor feels “heartbroken”

Humans of New York

and DKNY

Humans of New York and DKNY

•Photographer Brandon Stanton has

700,000+ Facebook "likes" •Takes artistic portraits of New Yorkers

on the street and posts daily

•DKNY asks to purchase 300 photos to

hang in store windows for $15,000

•Stanton asks for closer to $50 per photo

and DKNY declines

Humans of New York and DKNY

•“Today, a fan sent me a photo from a

DKNY store in Bangkok. The window is

full of my photos. These photos were

used without my knowledge, and without

compensation."•Stanton makes public plea for DKNY to

"donate $100,000 on my behalf to the

YMCA in Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn."

Humans of New York and DKNY

•By 10 a.m. the next day, the Facebook post had generated more than 38,000

"likes" and more than 4,000 comments

•DKNY released a statement explaining its error and announcing it would donate

$25,000

Associated Press

Twitter Feed Hacked

Associated Press Twitter Feed Hacked

•Associated Press tweet appears "Breaking: Two Explosions in the White House and

Barack Obama is injured"•The incident took place eight days after

the Boston Marathon bombings

•The Dow Jones industrial average plunges more than 128 points in seconds after the report

Associated Press Twitter Feed Hacked

•White House spokesman Jay Carney says

Obama is "fine" •The AP quickly takes down its Twitter

account and announces it has been hacked

Associated Press Twitter Feed Hacked

•Group of hackers loyal to Syrian President Bashar Assad claim

responsibility for the hoax, tweeting

out:"Ops! @AP get owned by Syrian

Electronic Army! #SEA #Syria #ByeByeObama."

Chick-Fil-A and Fake Facebook Profiles

Chick-Fil-A and Fake Facebook Profiles

•Chick-Fil-A president Dan Cathy takes stance in opposition to gay marriage

•"We intend to stay the course. We know

that it might not be popular with

everyone, but thank the Lord, we live in

a country where we can share our values

and operate on biblical principles."

•Offended customers, observers and celebrities take to Twitter to blast them

Chick-Fil-A and Fake Facebook Profiles

•Jim Henson's Creature Shop Puppet takes issue with the stance, saying it will not

supply toys any longer

•Chick-Fil-A recalls toys, saying there is a safety issue

•Consumers dispute claim about a "safety issue" on Chick-Fil-A’s Facebook page

Chick-Fil-A and Fake Facebook Profiles

•Two Facebook accounts appear, apparently solely to defend Chick-Fil-A

• In response, a girl named "Abby Farle" argues the toys were recalled weeks before the stance

•A Facebook user outs Farle as a puppet

account, created only eight hours before

Chick-Fil-A and Fake Facebook Profiles

•One is deleted, and the other is "outed" when the profile picture turns out to be a stock photo of a random teenage girl

Chick-Fil-A and Fake Facebook Profiles

•Chick-Fil-A posts on its Facebook Page

•"The Chick-Fil-A culture and service tradition in our restaurants is to treat

every person with honor, dignity and respect – regardless of their belief, race, creed, sexual orientation or gender"

•Post receives more than 47,000 Likes and

10,000 comments in hours

KitchenAid and

Obama’s Dead Grandma

KitchenAid and

Obama’s Dead Grandma

•KitchenAid Twitter account posts during presidential debate

•The tweet references Obama's deceased grandmother, Madelyn Dunham, who died

in November 2008

•The company deletes the message and

apologizes, but it had already been retweeted many times

•Many Twitter users write that the person who sent the tweet would be fired

KitchenAid and

Obama’s Dead Grandma

•Hours later, Cynthia Soledad, who

identified herself as "the head of the KitchenAid brand," took to Twitter to

explain what happened and apologize to

President Obama.

Kenneth Cole and the

Arab Spring

Kenneth Cole and the Arab Spring

•During the Arab Spring uprising, Kenneth Cole himself tweets about company’s sale

•Uses the hashtag #Cairo, which is

trending worldwide at the time

•Gaffe ignites media firestorm

•Hashtag #boycottKennethCole appears

Kenneth Cole and the Arab Spring

•Satirical @KennethColePR account

appears

•Fake tweets and ads like "People from

New Orleans are flooding into Kenneth

Cole stores!" and "Wardrobe got you

water-BORED? GITMO of our new spring

collection" appear

Kenneth Cole and the Arab Spring

•Cole apologizes on both Twitter and

Facebook within hours, saying he wasn't "intending to make light of a serious

situation"

What to Learn

(plus a few generally good ideas)

Assign a monitor

Have a plan or a schedule

Be transparent and open

Respond in a timely fashion

Start conversations, and participate

Don’t overshare, or become intrusive

Don’t become a troll

or engage in flame wars

Make timely, regular posts

Share photos and video

Give something of value

Graham Garner

Vice President for Marketing and Communication

Wartburg College

Social media handle: garnergrahamgraham.garner@wartburg.edu or garnergraham@gmail.com