Making use of unrelated trending topics on Twitter to promote your business or personal tweets is behavior anyone with any Twitter courtesy knows to be spammy.

Using Twitter to shamelessly self-promote? That’s not really too looked down upon, depending on the proportion of plugging to other content. Using a catastrophic event where people have died, and hashtags are even being used to coordinate locals involved in unrest or in the midst of a disaster? That’s a bit more… gross.

Kenneth Cole, both a designer and a brand, is probably looking for a new social media coordinator after the above tweet appeared in their timeline a few hours back. (Habitat UK, a home furnishings brand, fell into the same trap in the summer of 2009.)

The tweet reads:

Millions are in uproar in #Cairo. Rumor is they heard our new spring collection is now available online at http://bit.ly/KCairo -KC

If you’re not a Twitter user, what makes the practice so offensive is that it’s not just a tone deaf crack about current events, nor an insensitive joke about world politics. It’s an attempt to piggyback off the popularity of an event in which people have died and gotten injured, Anderson Goddamn Cooper has gotten hit in the face and shit has essentially gotten very real, merely because it is one of the hashtags or terms displayed on everyone’s main page.

The part where everyone is mad at Kenneth Cole, or Kenneth Cole’s social media person, is pretty much over- Twitter has moved on to satirizing the poor taste of the Kenneth Cole Cairo tweet with the account- of course- @KennethColePR.

Kenneth Cole’s social media person gives inadvertent lesson on how to suck at Twitter is a post from: The Inquisitr

Price Chopper, a chain of supermarkets in the northeastern US, is rapidly trying to remedy a flood of social media backlash after one of their employees went off the reservation big time in retaliation for a Syracuse University employee’s anti-Price Chopper tweet.

Last week, the shopper tweeted a brief complaint about the store, praised a competitor, and posted a picture of some questionably-arranged signage. Not a massive call-out as far as social media is concerned, and hardly behavior you might expect would come back and bite you in the derriere if you consider all the ways online activities could impact your life. However, one rogue Price Chopper employee overreacted in a bizarre and frankly scary manner, tracking down the customer at his place of employment and emailing a complaint to a random string of higher ups at the customer’s previously uninvolved workplace.

Not only did the woman contact the man’s employer- with whom Price Chopper has no pre-existing business relationship- she also requested disciplinary action be taken against the man and hinted that if the employer did not follow through, it would damage any future business that might occur between the two companies. The story emerged on a Tumblr set up specifically to chronicle the supermarket’s transgression and response, and the author describes how it all went down:

After receiving this complaint, Price Chopper’s public relations team did the unthinkable — they contacted the customer’s employer (which was mentioned in the individual’s twitter bio) requesting disciplinary action be taken against the individual for their negative post!

…Although Price Chopper did reply to the customer directly, they did not wait for a response before dragging the individual’s employer into the mix. In an email addressed to a seemingly random list of executives at the customer’s workplace, including the customer’s supervisor, Price Chopper labeled the individual as destructive and negative. They suggested that this individual’s distaste for their stores could jeopardize the relationship between Price Chopper and the company where the individual is employed, and they requested action be taken against the individual.

While the Tumblr doesn’t name names, a follow-up article from an Albany-area news site identifies all the parties involved- the shopper, the Price Chopper PR team member and the whistleblower. Surprisingly, the latest tweets coming from Price Chopper indicate the employee, who was supposedly a business reporter before joining the social media team at Price Chopper, has not been axed for the incident and ensuing clusterfracas.

The newness of social media can often trip up companies, particularly less media-oriented ones like supermarkets, as they attempt to wade in and successfully interact with what is what is essentially a variable. But it’s find it hard to imagine the thought process that preceded such a strange, creepy course of action. Surely even the least tech-savvy would understand if you wouldn’t act in a similar way in an analogous “real life” situation, such as following a customer back to their workplace and directly speaking with their boss, doing such over Twitter or email is ill-advised?

In defense of Price Chopper, it seems fairly obvious this is the work of one extraordinarily misguided individual, and their decision to allow her to remain with the company is beyond generous. (Personally, I could not imagine trusting the judgment of a person who would dream up such a scenario, but public bloodletting could make the situation worse.) However, it seems that regardless of how well it was handled after the fact, the company is doomed to be included on social media “don’t” lists for quite a while.

[via Consumerist]

Future ex-Price Chopper employee illustrates how to use social media to damage brands and scare people is a post from: The Inquisitr

If you’ve been on internet forums or any social media outlet, you’re probably aware that certain topics are almost always ground zero for a flame war- among them are circumcision, tipping waitstaff and breastfeeding.

A Tulsa coffeeshop owner managing a Twitter account for his business learned the hard way yesterday how pissing off the wrong contingent of Twitter can catapult a business to undesirable infamy when he tweeted that his shop was a no-breastfeeding zone. And we all know that hell hath no fury like a mommyblogger sent to her car or a toilet stall to feed her baby.

Double Shot Coffee Company owner Brian Franklin sent the ill-advised tweet sometime yesterday:

“Notice: No breastfeeding at the DoubleShot. Thank you.”

Putting aside the fact that he’s wrong, that women have rights in his state to breastfeed wherever they are legally allowed to be present and generally breastfeeding women are not looking to have you stare at their boobs; I also wonder who spends money in his shop while much of the population is out at their day jobs? Who has more time to spend in a coffeeshop during daylight hours- the workforce, or a woman spending the majority of her time with a breastfeeding infant? I mean, doesn’t this have “bad marketing strategy” written all over it? Multiplied by social media, it’s even worse.

Franklin quickly began backpedaling, but the sad thing is that he doesn’t seem to have ever grasped why his tweet was so inflammatory. He seems to be placating what he views as an angry set of “nipple nazis,” not ever realizing that if you’ve ever been asked to feed your infant in a filthy restroom stall, merely reading a tweet like that from hundreds of miles away still can make you apoplectic with rage. He sent some confusing and inconsistent tweets after he deleted his first:

Settle down, folks. We just don’t like walking across the room and seeing your breast. Maybe you could do it in private.

Ok ok, breastfeeding allowed again at the DoubleShot. Hey! Breastfeeding all around.

I was just kidding anyway. Didn’t expect that blow up. Sorry to get you guys riled up.

So women shouldn’t expose their “breast,” but it’s okay anyway and he was just kidding in the first place. Franklin clarifies further to the local news:

“Some of the people angry about this were concerned for their individual rights and the right of their baby to eat.  It is as if I had tried to pass a law banning the practice of breastfeeding universally.  The fact is, these people aren’t concerned with individual rights.  They are concerned with THEIR rights.  They would not fight for my right to ban breastfeeding in my establishment if I chose to do so. I don’t mind if people breastfeed in the DoubleShot, but it’s funny to me that people don’t consider the rights of others; only their own.  If one really believes in the American dream of individual rights, they must believe in the rights of others to do or think or say things they don’t agree with.  My capitalist ideals tell me that business owners should be able to make their own rules and individuals should then decide if they want to support that business or not.  As it is, the over-regulation of our government seems to step in and tell us everything that we can and can’t do.  I agree with the rights of people to boycott businesses they dislike, though in this case, people are mislead.  We allow breastfeeding and women do breastfeed when they want,” says Brian Franklin.

No, Brian- the problem is not that individual businesses are having their rights assailed. It’s that if people with your level of ignorance were allowed to routinely ban breastfeeding in public places, many would, and women would be forced to use formula or breastfeed a child in a hot car or dirty restroom.

Laws are needed precisely to protect women from businesses that may behave as yours does- who exactly do you need protection from that requires a law? How is a woman nursing harming your business? And if an upset customer complained to you that a black person was sitting at the table next to them, would you ban black people from your establishment to retain business? Should there be laws protecting classes of people from discrimination, particularly in areas where there is known to be tendencies to discriminate? And if so, why should breastfeeding women be excluded from the same protection afforded other classes who tend to be discriminated against?

This all goes back the the fact that if this argument hadn’t made it to social media in the first place, Franklin a) probably would still have the offensive policy in place and b) wouldn’t have gotten all the attention from the Twitter scandal. The effects of incidents like this in social media on a small business are difficult to measure, but hopefully as angry tweets from lactivists roll in hour by hour, he’ll at least begin to understand why saying polarizing things on Twitter isn’t necessarily clever business practice.

[via Consumerist]

Tulsa’s Double Shot coffee shop percolates Twitter outrage over breastfeeding ban is a post from: The Inquisitr

Today is Dunkin’ Donuts’ much ballyhooed free iced coffee day, the kind of promotion that generally creates a lot of positive feedback in fans both online and off.

However, it seems today’s free iced coffee day has gone over poorly in a lot of markets, if the company’s Facebook wall is any indication. Even in the past twenty minutes, the feed has become clogged with angry customers who just want a free iced coffee, damnit. (It does seem pretty short-sighted to advertise the promotion nationally but only offer it in a handful of markets.)

Here’s what angry customers are Facebooking at the beloved coffee and donuts brand:

Yeah what happened? Went to Dunks this morning supposed to be free Iced Coffee Day.. DENIED!!! What’s up with that?

no free ice coffee in massachusetts? WTF? didn’t dunkin donuts START in massachusetts?? booooooooo. i’m going to honey dew. and “unliking” dunkin donuts.

No free iced coffee in MA??? Are you kidding me? I just sent my mom to DD for the free iced coffee.

What happened to free iced coffee day? You advertised and everything…. you LIED

This promotion is a great example of how social media can detract from a company’s promotional efforts through sites like Facebook and Twitter. Instead of a bunch of happy customers (there were far more angry than satisfied comments on Facebook) tweeting about their free coffees, Dunkin’ Donuts’ Facebook wall has turned into a DnD bashfest because so many people weren’t able to get the free iced coffee advertised by the brand. (Do you really have to be a “social media rockstar” to anticipate that if the majority of customers can’t get something cool you’ve advertised, there will be loud backlash?)

If you’re still hoping to get your hot little hands on a free iced coffee, there’s a list of participating markets here. (Bear in mind that customers are reporting being denied a freebie even in those areas.) And hopefully Dunkin’ Donuts will learn from the way this promotion backfired that if they’re going to talk about free coffee, they’d better bring some for the whole class.

When social media goes awry: Dunkin’ Donuts is giving away iced coffee, but not everywhere is a post from: The Inquisitr

UK home furnishings retailer Habitat is profusely apologizing after a pretty big fail on the social media front.

Habitat’s twitter page, @HabitatUK, got caught out spamming trending topics to get attention on the popular microblogging service. Okay, bad. Worse? Habitat’s offensive tweets were using the situation in Iran to boost traffic. *facepalm*

Here are some of the offending tweets.

Most Twitter users are used to those spammy tweets that annoyingly and shamelessly include every big trending topic, generally by low-rent spammers who sneak onto your followers list. #marksanfordaffair #meganfoxtransformerboobs #iphonesux, amirite? Habitat rushed to delete the tweets, but as you can see from my screengrab above (taken fifteen seconds ago), they’re still readily available in Twitter search. Habitat turned to the blogosphere to apologize, telling Social Media Today:

I know people have been waiting for a response tweet from us; we are treating this very seriously and wanted to offer a longer message. We have been reading everyone’s comments carefully and would like to make a very sincere apology to any Twitter users who were offended.

The top ten trending topics were pasted into hashtags without checking with us and apparently without verifying what all of the tags referred to. This was absolutely not authorised by Habitat. We were shocked when we discovered what happened and are very sorry for the offence that was caused. This is totally against our communications strategy. We never sought to abuse Twitter, have removed the content and will ensure this does not happen again.

It has been really valuable to hear how users would like us to use Twitter and we are determined to do better for the Twitter community.

Back on Twitter, Habitat also addressed the issue of third-party tweeting.

In response to speculation, we would like to clarify the hashtags were not uploaded by an agency.

Habitat’s Twitter fail is fated to go down as a textbook example of how not to get social media love. Not only did they demonstrate a really poor understanding of the medium, but they alienated a group of people who generally like to interact with trusted brands. Keyword: trust. Live it, learn it, love it, Habitat.

Habitat UK’s Twitter fail is a post from: The Inquisitr