There are some very interesting examples of bad social
media etiquette on the web, including racist and sexually inappropriate posts by athletes. However, the example I’m using in response to Kara Alheim’s discussion topic for this
week will be PG rated since my mother (or Eric Qualman) may be watching…
For all of the Marketing Communications professionals in the
class, I’m sure you will appreciate this failed tactic:
While this wasn't a particularly offensive tweet, it
exposed the underbelly of marketing tactics to the general public which hurt the reputation of both brands (the celebrity athlete and the Nokia brand). Desean Jackson (currently a wide receiver for
the Washington Redskins), inadvertently copy and pasted a prepackaged tweet
from Nokia without personalizing the tweet himself or at least removing the
quotations! According to Kerpen, “Actors, musicians, athletes…all have
excellent opportunities to grow their fan bases, shape public perception…by
harnessing social networking. Authenticity must be a key part of their plan,
though.” Jackson’s tweet is an example of a lack of authenticity for his brand. Michael Katz
(2012) of USA Today wrote, “Still, this writer wonders: Will we ever truly know
how Desean Jackson felt about the ESPYS Nokia pre-party?” Jackson did
delete the tweet after he realized the mistake. Kerpen (2011) suggests when
making a mistake, “if you make a typo in an update on Facebook or accidentally
share a broken link on Twitter, just delete it, fix it, and then share it again
along with a simple apology”. Jackson later retweeted:
Jackson did not acknowledge the error, which may
have been the reason the online social community exploited his mistake the way
they did.
The Nokia brand also suffered similar consequences. The lack
of authenticity on Nokia’s part was exposed since Nokia prepackaged a feeling
or opinion with “Chillin” and “It’s awesome” for the athlete to tweet rather
than have the athlete tweet their own opinion of the party. Jackson’s initial
tweet also brought attention to comments from other NFL players who also tweeted
about the Nokia party, all with similar comments. Takeo Spikes and Vince Young
tweeted exact replicas of Jackson’s tweet after the colon; in fact, they even
left the quotations on the tweet giving the public perception
that Nokia prepackaged the message for all athletes that posted #NokiaPreParty that evening (Floyd, 2012).
While Jackson deleted his original tweet and reposted
another tweet that appeared to be more individualized, I think it would have
been better for Jackson to acknowledge the mistake. I don’t think he would have
been able to resolve the error entirely, but he could have made a joke about
it which could have turned a negative perception to a positive one at least on
his end (not necessarily for Nokia). An example retweet could have been, “Chillin’ at
the @ESPYS #NokiaPreParty with my #copyandpaste function OFF. #oops.” And then he could have taken some pictures and
made some authentic comments about who he saw or what he was doing at the
event.
The last question Kara asked in this week’s discussion was whether
we thought it was fair to ban social media for entire athletic teams or if
using companies such as Varsity Monitor or UDiligence was suitable. This is a
very debatable topic, especially for businesses and other organizations. It
raises some questions about ethics and unfair hiring and firing practices as
well. On the topic of ethics and social media monitoring, Malby (2014) states “Experience shows that employers fire employees for reasons having nothing to do with work” (Maltby, 2014). Maltby (2014) goes on to note
that there are certain situations in which the employees’ Internet activity may
be of legitimate concern; the example used was if the employee belonged to an online racist group. Maltby (2014) suggests that the employer should hire a third
party to conduct the search under the specific guidelines relevant to the organization.
The search firm would only report on information within these established
guidelines rather than an “HR professional indiscriminately trawling through
social media” (Maltby, 2014). I think schools that use UDiligence and VarsityMonitor are approaching social media monitoring the right way. I think this
method is more suitable and fair than a coach searching social media accounts
of his/her athletes. If the school
establishes set guidelines for inappropriate behavior or comments on social
media and they make public their use of these search firms targeting all
students (not just suspected students per say) then it would seem to be the
most fair way to monitor social media accounts if such a need is determined necessary.
References:
Floyd, Brian. (2012, Jul 11). Everybody's Chillin' At The Nokia Pre-Party
(It's Awesome). Retrieved from http://www.sbnation.com/2012/7/11/3152495/espys-nokia-party-tweets
Katz, Michael. (2012, Jul 11). This deleted DeSean Jackson tweet is hilarious. Retrieved from http://content.usatoday.com/communities/gameon/post/2012/07/desean-jackson-twitter-nokia-espys-tweet/1#.VO4yKNLF--8
Kerpen, D. (2011). Likeable Social Media. How to Delight your
Customers, Create an Irresistible Brand, and Be Generally Amazing on Facebook
(and other Social Networks). New York: McGraw-Hill.
