This week’s social media fail is brought to you by US Airways! As you may have heard, US Airways took A LOT of heat yesterday for tweeting out one of the most graphic things a brand has ever tweeted. Now airlines automatically get a pretty bad rap on social media, mostly because delays happen, the accommodations are uncomfortable, there’s long lines, it’s expensive, etc., but what happened yesterday is likely to go down as one of the biggest social media blunders of 2014. The whole fiasco started off as a pretty regular exchange between a customer and the airline:
So far so good right? Delays happen, they’re not ideal, but they happen. US Airways response to the first tweet, I would argue, is spot on. The first response tweet from US Airways shows they monitor their social accounts, and engage with their customers when they’re less than thrilled. Good job! Unfortunately, here’s where things take a horrible, horrible turn for the worse:
The tweet was coupled with a picture, an extremely NSFW picture. How NSFW? Well, so NSFW that I won’t even be including a blurred out version of it in this blog post. That should give you some idea how NSFW this picture was. The tweet and image has since been deleted by US Airways but I caution and warn you, if you go googling for it, you will find it, and it will be no less NSFW when you do, so be warned.
With the NSFW tweet and accompanying image deleted, US Airways has since issued an apology via twitter which looked a little something like this:
Now, what happened? We’re not quite sure yet. Maybe an employee who was having an awful, awful day or the mishap could have been the result of an employee who recently found out they wouldn’t be working for US Airways any longer but still had access to their social account. At any rate, there’s an important lesson that can be learned from these social media fails.
For brands, be careful who you put in charge of your social media accounts. If there’s high turnover, take steps to prevent employees who are either on their way out the door or worse, already out the door, having access to your social media accounts.
For individuals, just think back to the whole Justine Sacco situation we blogged about just before the beginning of the new year. Always be mindful of what you’re posting.
What do you think about the US Airways NSFW fiasco? What do you think about social media #fails in general? As always, feel free to connect with me via Twitter!
pete_girard 