This was Definitely BAD TIMING!!!
Pick an instance of a corporate social media fail (ie. dropping the ball with customer service, poorly timed message, incorrect information, meltdowns, etc.) Explain how canned or planned content contributed to the moment.
Huge corporate Social Media Fail in 2016; Miracle Mattress, a Texas based company thought it would be a good idea to offer their loyal customers a special discount on a very memorable day…9/11. This company fell into the category of bad timing. Any promotion or benefit a company is trying to achieve in the face of others suffering is an obvious no! I’m not sure what the owner of the company was thinking when they came up with the idea for this advertisement?
So, the story is this… The mattress store put out a commercial, the manager and two employees appeared on the screen with a background of 2 separate “towers” of mattresses. The manager, Cherise Bonanno explained in an enthusiastic banter that we should all remember 9/11 by getting any size mattress for a “Twin Price”. At this point customers were probably in shock, as I was. I kept watching until the end (The big finale). At the end of the clip, she pushes 2 employees who were standing behind her into the stacks of mattresses, thus making them fall. With her reference to 9/11 prior, one is led to believe the mattresses falling is symbolizing the north and south towers of the World Trade Center falling. She didn’t stop there, one more dig. Cherise Bonanno decided to remind everyone to “never forget”, oh I surely will not forget this commercial. Possibly her motive was to have a huge impact, but this was not the way.
I can be almost positive to say that NO ONE with a heart would even be enticed to shop at this mattress store based on this promotion, in fact she probably created the opposite impression for customers by steering them away with an ignorant and empathetic commercial. I am still shaking my head when I picture the commercial in my mind. The video was eventually deleted off the stores Facebook timeline and a letter by the owner was put out apologizing for the mess.
To make matters worse, the owner said in an apology letter that a donation was going to be made with the sales from that commercial promotion. Making money off people dying and celebrating one of the worst historical terrorist attacks is not going to boost sales for any company. The fact that someone even thought this was a good idea boggles my mind. This was planned content at its worst. The company thoroughly thought and acted out the scenario in a commercial. They had a script to work off, it wasn’t spontaneous in any means, they truly wanted to benit on other peoples loss.
Try to see this in another scenario (to see how insanely ridiculous this was). Imagine I was running a Jewish summer camp. I decide to pitch a promotion for a discount on Holocaust Memorial Day. How crazy does this sound? How did they even think the idea of that type of promotion would even be a good idea? This comparison shows just how crazy the idea was.
The decisions that the company made to promote in this manor led to the company closing its doors indefinitely since there is no coming back from something as serious as that. I am sure that customers from that were thinking of shopping there or shopped there in the past were embarrassed to even be associated with the company by choosing to shopping there.
