Being from Michigan, I decided to write about a blunder made by someone in Detroit. A couple of years ago, Chrysler launched their “Imported From Detroit” campaign. The first airing of this campaign was on a Super Bowl commercial. A Chrysler employee, on March 9th, tweeted an insulting comment towards Michigan drivers. The tweet dropped the F-bomb on the company’s twitter account. The tweet was only meant for this person’s friends, but the slip up cost him much more than a scolding.
People evidently make mistakes. I have several different Twitter accounts on my phone and they are very easily accessed. The majority of the time my personal account is the main one used and is what the home screen is on, however, I’ll log into another one and forget to switch back onto my personal one. With this mistake I’m much more likely to tweet something off of this other account. It’s very important to be careful where you’re tweeting from and I think this employee was careless before he let this foul word slip. He deserved the punishment he received and he’s lucky that more consequences didn’t occur. With a degree form Michigan State University, he had a very bright future ahead of him. Because of this slip up, his whole career was tarnished. I think his example of not paying proper attention is the definition of why companies are afraid to hire younger generations to manage social media accounts. The company recovered and moved on after taking proper action towards the employee at fault by apologizing to their followers and deleting the tweet. I think Chrysler handled the situation appropriately and in a way that didn’t make it into a giant deal. By putting it on the down low and not bringing attention to it, they were able to avoid potential crisis and unwanted media attention, a smart tactic that worked effectively.
4:21 pm - 9-25-2012
I think this is a sticky situation. It all goes back to social media etiquette. While this employee did make a mistake and might not have realized he wasn’t logged onto his personal account, there is no excuse. He should have double checked and been cautious of what account he was signed in to, especially if he had access to the companies account. I agree that situations like these are what make companies wary of hiring younger employees to manage social media. Overall, i do agree that Chrysler handled the situation with grace by putting it on the back burner. They did not bring attention to it, which did avoid crisis.