What’s in a tweet? Literally, there are 140 characters, but those 140 wield great power. Especially if taken as offensive, controversial, or simply inappropriate. The negative impact of a poorly worded or inadvertent tweet isn’t as important as how you recover from them, just ask @KennethCole and @RedCross. Both experienced a mis-tweet recently and they both handled them very differently.
On February third fashion designer Kenneth Cole posted the following from his Twitter account @KennethCole:
Kenneth at the time really didn’t have a lot of followers on Twitter and his tweet may have gone unnoticed. However, he committed a Twitter faux pas, he hijacked a hashtag. And it wasn’t just any hashtag, it was one the entire world was following. I’m not going to go into how inappropriate and in poor taste the tweet was, we all know this. Where Kenneth Cole really dropped the ball was how he handled the fallout. Instead of addressing the situation head on and admitting fault, he sat on it and allowed the wounds to fester around the world for about four hours. On top of all of this the apology was half baked and lacked sincerity. The tweet was deleted (which was a completely futile action) and followed up with the apologies and a link to Kenneth Cole’s Facebook page. As you can see, apology not accepted. By not offering a truly sincere and timely apology Kenneth Cole just made things worse. Lesson learned? Let’s hope.
Last week the American Red Cross experienced what can only be described as a “Rogue” tweet. The result of a mishap while using multiple accounts on HootSuite.
Trust me folks, this is quite easy to do. The big difference is how @RedCross handled the whole situation. Obviously understanding the medium and monitoring their activity, they quickly realized what had happened and almost immediately addressed the situation. You can understand how this could have blown up in to a PR disaster. By taking a more human approach, their actions made the complete opposite happen, turning the rogue tweet into a mini funding drive supported by the Brewer @dogfishbeer. Dogfish should be heavily credited for helping turn this one around for the American Red Cross. Their proactive brand monitoring in social media allowed them to act and quickly, and associate themselves with an altruistic cause that benefited both parties.
The big takeaway? Kenneth Cole is a brand and its run by one person. Kenneth treated the Twitter account like it was his own, and its evident he doesn’t understand the space. The Red Cross was the victim of human error, but by having the right process and people in place helped turn a potential disaster with the help of Dogfish Brewery into a funding drive.
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