Lessons From This Summer’s Biggest Social Media Blunders

When a brand makes a PR fumble, regardless of the faux pas’s size, the brand’s response and the action it takes afterward—nowadays, largely in the arena of social media—can often be more influential and telling than the blunder itself. The poor handling of an error can altogether overshadow the original mishap. And that makes sense. We want the brands we love to display good character. We want them to share our views, and when they upset us, we want them to apologize and promise never to do it again. It doesn’t matter that we expect them to be infinitely more responsible and morally upstanding than we may be; they’re the ones that have to prove themselves worthy of our business. In modern business, social media has made transparency a necessity. An isolated incident that might have gone largely unnoticed by most consumers a decade ago is now front-page news, a water-cooler talking point the world over and a serious, unavoidable problem for the brand in question.