Following article is taken from the collection of social media disaster case studies published in our ebook Social Media Nightmares.
However good your intentions are, but if you don’t express them right, you will end up in a mess! This is exactly what happened with Bing, when they tried to market their brand by cashing on the Japanese earthquake incident. Bing received some really derogatory tweets on their promotion activity which literally tore their brand image apart.
Screen shot of the tweet made by Bing
Screen shot of the tweet made by people on Twitter
And surprisingly, Bing after 7 hours of this incident and when a very abusive hash tag started gaining traction on twitter reacted and sent an apology tweet from its official twitter account.
Bing people could have never imagined that they would also feel the aftershock of the earthquake in Japan!
Things you should not do to avoid such situations;
- While creating content for posting on your social media channels about natural calamities, social issues, crimes, never sound self oriented and marketing focused.
- If something unwanted happens, then be very swift in responding to the situation, or you will end up in missing the bus.
Find out more case studies in our ebook Social Media Nightmares. You can download it for free.