How One Tweet Can Damage Your Brand Within 30 Minutes – #guardianexclusive

Twitter January 27, 2011 5 Comments

Two worlds that I am obsessed with collided today when football and social media created a huge amount of buzz for a short period of time on Twitter. It all started around 4.30 when their sports Editor send out the following Tweet which in a couple of minutes spread all over the web and whipped people in to a frenzy. Coinciding with the end of the work day the Twitter gossip went in to overdrive and offices around the country came to a stop as people speculated just who this huge story could be about. Rooney? Torres? Drogda?

The Guardian Brand

The reason people were in a frenzy was because the Guardian have a super reputation for covering sports and produce some brilliant content on a daily basis. People trust them. So if the Guardian Sports Editor was saying this was a huge story then it really must be big. Conversation broke out all over the web as 1000s of football fans frantically hit the refresh button waiting to see which of the big teams had splashed the cash or where this story out of the blue had suddenly come from.

The Story That Never Was

After all the hype and half an hour of transfer frenzy the story turned out to be the biggest dud ever. Just another transfer rumor on a slow news day the same as 100 other stories knocking around. It didn’t even involve an actual bid or any quotes and seemed to be just a rumor. Total and utter disbelief was the first thing that most people felt that not only was there no transfer but the story itself didn’t even seem to have any weight behind it.

The Backlash

The backlash came pretty hard and within seconds of the lame story being announced. People started hashtags and there was some genuine anger by people (myself included) who had been led down the garden path. Nobody likes being taken for a fool and people felt as if it was some sort of marketing stunt.

Coverage is also spilling on to blogs and people are still talking about it hours later. It’s not just a social media story but also a sports and mainstream media story. Most of the action was focused in a frantic 30 minute period and the damage was really done reputationally within seconds of the story being announced.

The Outcome

Storm in a teacup or a major misjudgement? A social media storm like this will have blown over by tomorrow morning but the question is what does this do to the brand? Do people lose trust? Do people stop reading? I’m only guessing but I’d be surprised if the Guardian didn’t have a record traffic day but the long term damage was done within a couple of minutes of that “story” going live. I actually don’t think he had any idea that this would happen or that it would spread so quickly but an editor at a major newspaper should have some idea of the power of Twitter and what a tweet like that could do. I actually think he did think it was a huge story and got excited about having it and thought it was worth getting his own followers excited about and that it wouldn’t spread much further. How wrong he was. Twitter is a massively powerful tool that can bring down governments and hurt brands within minutes. I spend a lot of my time explaining to executives why their brand or business should be embracing the medium and most are petrified and thanks to this one Tweet they’ll have another good case study to show just how lethal Twitter can be when when not used correctly.

On the upside Ian Prior himself seems to think this was all a good laugh and has been trying to make it all seem light hearted but I’d say things might not be so happy go lucky internally at the moment in there. What do you think? Did this do serious damage or just some silly football banter on Twitter?

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