Excuse My Tweet

Picture this. You are the celebrity comedian behind a renowned series of Aflac commercials, using your resounding spokesduck’s voice for over a decade.

You are a celebrity fashion designer/owner, with a penchant of raising social awareness, trying some witty, current-event copy to promote your new season’s fashion line to your fans.

Or you are a Chrysler contractor, a University of Michigan MBA student who mixed up what internet account he was communicating with while stuck in traffic in Detroit’s Interstate 696.

You decide to send a message 140-character style. It’s Twitter time.

So you hit send. Oh-oh.

You know the rules. It’s the ones we keep telling our teenagers.

It doesn’t matter if it’s electronic.  It’s written, not spoken. It’s public. It’s sent.

Even if you remove it, it’s often too late. It has a newslife of its own – even when -- especially when -- you have to retract it as a marketer.

So what do marketers do, for the benefit of their consumers?

1) Gilbert Gottfried who most of us know as the PG voice of Iago, the parrot in Disney’s “Aladdin,” was fired from Aflac after making a bunch of jokes via Twitter about the Japanese earthquake, including: "I just split up with my girlfriend, but like the Japanese say, 'There'll be another one floating by any minute now.'"

Fired.

If the words or actions are deemed the least bit objectionable or in bad taste you’ll watch cool ad agencies or marketing departments turns deeply conservative and ends the relationship with the celebrity bad boy. Cold.

In traditional advertising, Pepsi did it with Madonna, over 22 years ago, when their advertisement featuring her image was confused with her music video “Like a Prayer.” The commercial had none of the religious imagery of the video but for Pepsi, it was too close for comfort.

2) Kenneth Cole tweeted his announcement: “Millions are in uproar in #Cairo. Rumor is they heard our new spring collection is now available online at http://bit.ly/KCairo -KC."

Intense apology.

If the misdeeds and words are from the corporate leader – there’s nothing more necessary in cyberspace than “I’m sorry.” And Kenneth did.

And Calvin Klein before him, two decades ago, apologized and pulled his advertising depicting young sexy teenagers asking probing questions by a creepy off screen director.

We consumers forgave them both.

3) Scott Bartosiewicz posted an obscene tweet on the Chrysler brand’s official account meant for his personal account, "I find it ironic that Detroit is known as the #motorcity and yet no one here knows how to (expletive) drive."

Fired. And Chrysler’s social media firm that hired Scott – contract renewal denied.

Bringing up the age-old question, “Who’s running the show here?” The inside marketing department, the leading digital agency, the digital agency or their hire? For you and I, it is typically invisible. We care about the message – not the one who’s sending it unless something goes awry. Then once things die down, if handled appropriately, it becomes a Trivial Pursuit question or a mention in a business year-end wrap up article: “The 2011 tweets that went terribly wrong.”  

At the end of the day, mistakes happen. That’s why public relations agencies, crisis management firms and lawyers were born. But because companies are already under enormous scrutiny by consumers who tweet their own ideas about a firm’s brands, it should be a critical goal for today’s corporations to do whatever it takes to keep their own house (and tweets) in order.