3 Twitter Viral Marketing Examples Gone Bad

3 Twitter Viral Marketing Examples Gone Bad

If you fol­low our blog, you’re prob­a­bly used to see­ing great viral mar­ket­ing exam­ples. Today we’re going in a dif­fer­ent direc­tion. We’re bring­ing you some viral mar­ket­ing exam­ples gone bad. In oth­er words, some­times mar­ket­ing fails… big time.

Viral Marketing Example #1 — US Department of Justice Gets Too Personal

What hap­pens when the US Depart­ment of Jus­tice com­mu­ni­ty man­ag­er for­gets to log out of the account he man­ages and log into his per­son­al account? A per­son­al, opin­ion­at­ed tweet like this one. And a pho­to that’s off the mark.

The les­son? Make sure your social media page man­ag­er logs out of your brand account before mak­ing per­son­al remarks online. Oth­er­wise, it’s your brand that will suf­fer.

Viral Marketing Example #2 — Hawkers’ Bad Mexican Joke

In one of the worst viral mar­ket­ing exam­ples of 2016, sun­glass­es brand Hawk­ers tried to cap­i­tal­ize on the Amer­i­can-Mex­i­can ten­sion with a joke.

Trans­lat­ed, that tweet means “Mex­i­cans, put on these glass­es so they can’t see your cry­ing eyes tomor­row when build­ing the wall.”

Guess what hap­pened after? Hawk­ers poster boy F1 dri­ver Ser­gio Perez ditched the brand. And Mex­i­cans and oth­ers bashed the brand on social media.

Things qui­et­ed after the company’s social media team stepped up to apol­o­gize. But the dam­age to the company’s image in Mex­i­co was already done.

The les­son? Social media isn’t the place for inap­pro­pri­ate humor. Don’t post a pos­si­ble provoca­tive mes­sage. Get a few dif­fer­ent peo­ple to read any­thing con­tentious, and if there’s any sus­pi­cion, drop it.

Viral Marketing Example #3 — MTV Australia’s American English

Also in 2016, dur­ing the Gold­en Globes, stars Eva Lon­go­ria and Amer­i­ca Fer­rera took to the stage to announce some nom­i­na­tions. In response, MTV Aus­tralia tweet­ed this.

Peo­ple flared up at the joke, which went on to become one of the most racist viral mar­ket­ing exam­ples in recent years.

Admit­ted­ly, the poster didn’t intend this. But the MTV social blun­der illus­trates just how impor­tant it is for a brand to get the tone of their social mes­sage right.

In a dif­fer­ent con­text, MTV Aus­tralia may have got­ten away with it. But not on prime time Twit­ter.

And the les­son — it’s all about the tone. No mat­ter how clever or inge­nious your social media mar­ket­ing con­tent is, if the tone is offen­sive or open to mis­un­der­stand­ings, it won’t work. Worse, it will like­ly get you into trou­ble.

Feel­ing a bit dis­heart­ened by all these viral mar­ket­ing exam­ples gone bad? As a mar­ket­ing agency based in Los Ange­les, we’ll be sure to cheer you up.

Also pub­lished on Medi­um.