Oversights
American Apparel posted an image on tumblr in 2014 tagged smoke and clouds to celebrate the Fourth of July on its stream; a beautiful picture, quite artistic and in the appropriate colors of red, white and blue. The unfortunate thing was, that who ever responsible selected a picture of the space shuttle challenger disaster, a tragedy that shocked the world in 1986. The company withdrew the post and apologized by blaming the age and international background of the employee who posted it. Clearly being born after 1986 exempts you from knowing anything about it. Was this purely a mistake or a provocative experiment gone wrong?
American Apparel is known for provocative ads. In the case of oversight, how about better publication routines and control standards? And in the case of experimentation, to see how far the audience and customer base can be stretched, how about some common sense?
Another interesting case is US Airways. The company started using Twitter and facebook for customers as a new medium and communication channel. Interestingly enough a rather sexual picture made it into the companies twitter feed which stayed active over an hour. After removing it US Airways issued a statement apologizing to its customer. The picture, coming form another feed, had inadvertently been put into the response. Preventable? Yes.
Last but not least, Mr. Donald Trump. I cannot quite decide whether it was a failure or just another way to build his image. He tweeted last Sunday a quote form Mussolini:
@ilduce2016: ‘It is better to live one day as a lion than 100 years as a sheep,’ — @realDonaldTrump #MakeAmericaGreatAgain,” the Republican frontrunner shared from a parody Twitter account at 6:13 a.m.
Now for most of us being associated with a fascist dictator would not be our first choice. In Mr. Trumps case it didn’t matter that much. He retweeted: “But what difference does make whether it’s Mussolini or somebody else? It’s certainly a very interesting quote.” The account used it dedicated to his quotes and it would not be the first time that he shared controversial statements with his 6.5 followers. His retweet was favored only 3800 times. Which may account as a failure. Preventable? No. Possibly strategy.
