Boston Marathon Tragedy Shows Why Brands Need Human Touch on Twitter ...
Scheduled tweets make brands look insensitive.
Adweek / April 15th, 2013
The Boston Marathon explosions today were yet the latest example that branded accounts need a human watching the news constantly to halt scheduled promotions on Twitter when national tragedies occur. Despite notable ad industry players like Ford social media director Scott Monty, Vayner Media CEO Gary Vaynerchuk and others warning their thousands of followers to stop with marketing-minded tweets, Twitter streams have still seen a surprising number of badly timed messaging.
Brands typically schedule tweets to be published ahead of time. Back in July when the mass theater shooting occurred in Aurora, Colo., scheduled tweets from the Natonal Rifle Association and Celeb Boutique proved to be awfully timed and seemed to have alerted the marketing community about the perils of automation. But it appears many marketers haven't mandated that their Twitter accounts are monitored at all times by an at-the-ready staffer.
At any rate, (at the link) are some bad and good examples—which are which is self-explanatory—from the last two hours. Others are simply telling. (When embedded within the Adweek content-management system, the tweets' time-stamps were inexplicably pushed ahead by roughly four hours. By clicking through the tweets, one can see the actual publish times.)
TWEETS/LINK HERE: http://www.adweek.com/news/technology/boston-marathon-tragedy-shows-why-brands-need-human-touch-twitter-148606
I think insensitive is too kind a word. Here are two:
Dick Vitale -- Only a few SPECIAL EDITION BALLS FROM Dick Vitale Gala remain - CALL NOW 941 350 0580 $ 100 benefits V FOUNDATION pic.twitter.com/E2GjXibg7V
Idiots!
