An errant tweet by KitchenAid resulted in a short-term pr disaster, but the brand minimized the damage with a quick apology, according to one researcher.
Simply Measured looked at @KitchenAidUSA interactions on Twitter at around 6:42 p.m. PST, the time of the tweet, and then eight minutes later when the brand issued its apology:
Deepest apologies for an irresponsible tweet that is in no way a representation of the brand's opinion. #nbcpolitics— KitchenAid (@KitchenAidUSA) October 4, 2012
As the chart below shows, activity spiked about an hour later, by which time the brand's apology was already part of the message. After that, there was a sharp drop in activity. In total, there were 15,146 mentions for @KitchenAidUSA on Wednesday and only 6,787 by 3 p.m. PST on Thursday.
The damage control appears to have worked. "They were fast," says Adam Schoenfeld, CEO of SimplyMeasured. "That's impressive. They were quite quick."
KitchenAid is one of several brands that have caused an uproar with offensive tweets. For example, Kenneth Cole's #Cairo tweet during the Arab Spring appeared to make light of the situation. One month later, Chrysler dropped the F-bomb on its Twitter. In Cole's case, the brand apologized for the tweet about an hour later.
But Chrysler's apology took a little longer.
In a more recent example, Microsoft tweeted a message critical of right-wing pundit Ann Coulter. As with the KitchenAid incident, Microsoft's tweet appeared to be a case in which an employee mistakenly sent a personal message from a corporate account.
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