Oops! Chrysler Tweets the F-word
UPDATE: The f-word tweeter gives an interview.
“Fuck” has little impact in a digital world of Tubes and Twits and Books of Faces and such, but in a major corporation’s official communication medium, in this case Chrysler’s Twitter account, its enough to get a “fucker” fired.
The now-unemployed sap who tweeted it worked for New Media Strategies, the firm hired by Chrysler to handle its online branding and marketing. He made the career-ending mistake of posting the following:
Well, that is rather ironic. He says he intended to post that on his personal Twitter account rather than sharing it with Chrysler’s 8,000 followers on Twitter. Oops.
Chrysler says their primary complaint wasn’t the use of the f-word. Rather, they took offense to the anti-Detroit sentiment behind his Tweet, which reflected poorly on the company’s newly cultivated “Imported from Detroit” image.
Chrysler, headquartered in the distant and quiet suburb of Auburn Hills, is spending millions in advertising to remind the public of its connection to Detroit. This comes after a miserable decade of being shackled up in a badly mislabeled “merger of equals” with Daimler-Benz, with ads that once declared the greatness of American creativity backed by German engineering.
The lesson here: Tweet carefully.
Update: The agency was fired too.
http://adage.com/article/digital/chrysler-splits-media-strategies-f-bomb-tweet/149335/
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