Now almost every brand is active on social media and a strong social media presence has become a core business value for all. Interactions and engagements with your audience bring lots of new opportunities for you to run a successful online business through social media. However, as you get famous in front of millions of social media users, you can also screw up in front of them if you fail to impress them.
There can be plenty of reasons that a brand fails to impress its audience through its products or services. It can be because of sharing something inappropriate or against any religion, caste, race, or a group of people.
2018 has been also the year in which some businesses reach to success-heights while plenty saw a great fail. Also, many top brands face huge embarrassments because of their poor strategies of social media posting. Some of the top-most embarrassments for notable brands that can also be called social media failures of 2018 include:
1. Slap Rihanna -Snapchat
Everyone knows what happened between Rihanna and Chris Brown back in 2009. Rihanna badly suffered at the hands of the other. The incident became a hot topic in recently in March 2018 again when Snapchat did a social media blunder.
Image Courtesy: Twitter
In detail, Snap ran an ad for a game and that particular ad as highlighting two choices for its users with a title “Would You Rather” “Slap Rihanna” or “Punch Chris Brown”?
When a person tries to come up with some sort of assignment, he does proper planning and even sometimes also takes help of an assignment writing service. But, it appeared that Snapchat doesn’t do any preparation before posting such kind of ads.
The ad disturbed both Snapchat users and Rihanna too. She even wrote an Instagram story shaming Snapchat for this promotion of domestic violence. In the end, the platform removed the ad and publically apologized to both its users and Rihanna.
However, thousands of users had removed their Snapchat accounts and uninstalled its app on the request of Rihanna. The brand also lost up to £650m because of this blunder.
2. Transformation – Dove
Dove has been known for good products and commercial. The brand also has a great reputation for its good influence on women as it gives a natural and realistic touch to its products. However, this brand also got stuck in hot debate in 2018.
Image Courtesy: All 4 Women
The brand had been doing well with its successful campaigns like “Evolution”, “Real Beauty Sketches” and others. They made women feel proud of their looks. However, just a single post on the official Facebook page of the brand sparked a controversy for her.
In that post, the brand showed a picture of a black woman transforming into a white woman after using Dove for some days. This created a racism controversy with the brand and the social media platforms distributed it across the world.
It went against also the brand’s message of Dove that says that all beauty is real. After lots of hatred and dislikes by women from all races, the brand removed its post and released the following statement:
“As we’ve seen with all the other ads, the apology doesn’t do much but the ad does teach us to always review your content through a critical lens. Make sure that it doesn’t offend or in this case, totally go against what your brand represents.”
3. Snake People – New York Times
You must be thinking how come the name of New York Times can come in this discussion of social media failures. Though it comes one of the most reputable newspaper, a single article created huge troubles for this the New York Times.
Image Courtesy: BBC
An article with the title “President Trump’s Exaggerated and Misleading Claims on Trade” by one of its editors sparked the controversy. In detail, the editor had a sort of extension in the browser he was using. The extension is called “Millennials to Snake People” that changes the word ‘Millennials’ in any discourse to ‘Snake People’.
The same was done in the article that wherever there was the word ‘Millennials’ in that article was automatically changed to “Snake People”. This brought a great confusion for the readers of that article.
The irony was that despite being such a great news brand, there was no re-checking of the article before publishing. Moreover, the article with that error was published on the company’s social channels as well.
After a lot of criticism and drama, the authority rectified the mistake and the editor himself rendered any apology on Twitter with this message:
4. Yanny/Laurel – US Air Force
You must remember that audio clip about Yanny and Laurel that sparked a lot of jokes back in May this year. In the midst of that craziness, U.S Air Force also tried to make its contribution to the party. However, it’s proved as mere a blunder by them.
Image Courtesy: Twitter
As a result of that clip, social media had divided into two group; Laurel’s and Yanny’s. Numerous famous brands including Coca-Cola, Barnes and Noble, Warby Parker, and many others also used this trend in their promotional ads. It all went in humor until the US Air Force crossed the line with this tweet:
The tweet was widely criticized by social media stating that rendering jokes on this serious and sensitive issue of the Afghan War was not appropriate. Later, the department had to issue a public apology.
Over To You…
There isn’t any doubt that social media is the best platform to get in touch with a global audience. But, it demands a great responsibility to have a critical eye on every single thing before sharing it publically.
The more audience you have, the more cautious you need to remain because a small mistake can bring misfortunes for you. Whether you are a small or big brand no matter and how much confidence you have on your social media promoters, there should be a review of everything. Because, once the damage is done, no apology will be able to heal it!
Author Bio
Anna Marsh is an experienced social media manager and blogger. She blogs for the people of every age group and it is the reason why she has readers from every part of the world. She is also very helpful for students because she provides writing assistance to students. If you want to contact her then follow her on Facebook, Twitter, and Google+.
