KitchenAid Social Media Mix-up

Posted on March 9, 2015 Updated on March 9, 2015

Have you ever seen a post from a brand or individual you follow and thought “what in the world were they thinking by posting that?”. Unfortunately, social media accounts get hacked quite often. It doesn’t just happen to individuals, but large corporations like Delta Airlines and Burger King. It happens so frequently now that people automatically assume that the account was hacked when they see one of these posts. We’re so accustomed to seeing hacked accounts that we often give the brand or individual the benefit of a doubt. Sometime when you see an off the wall post, however, the account wasn’t hacked- the account was just posted to by mistake by someone who actually has the ability to post onto the account. This is what happened with the kitchen appliances brand KitchenAid.

In 2008, right before Barack Obama was elected president, his grandmother passed away. Following her death, the following statement was posted onto KitchenAid’s (@KitchenAidUSA) Twitter account: “Obama’s gma even knew it was going 2 b bad! ‘She died 3 days b4 he became president’ #nbcpolitics”. Although it appeared that the account may have been hacked, that was not the case. One of KitchenAid’s social media team members accidentally posted the tweet onto the corporate account instead of on his own account. Although the tweet was quickly removed by KitchenAid, it was seen by thousands of people. In fact, the tweet was also discussed outside of social media in places such as The Chicago Tribune, Huffington Post, Forbes, and Fast Company. Following the tweet, KitchenAid issued the following apology: “Deepest apologies for an irresponsible tweet that is in no way a representation of the brand’s opinion. #nbcpolitics”. As if they didn’t think that the first policy was enough, they then issued a policy directly to the president: “I would like to personally apologize to President @BarackObama, his family and everyone on Twitter for the offensive tweet sent earlier”.

While I feel that the first apology was necessary, I think that the second policy was unnecessary. I understand that they wanted to make sure that the Obama family knew that the tweet was not representative of a corporate stance, Obama wasn’t actually tagged in the original tweet. I feel like by posting the second apology tweet, they were bringing more attention to the situation than what was actually needed.

The situation that occurred with KitchenAid is a lesson that all social media managers can learn from. Because what is posted on social media can be so harmful to your brand’s reputation (and for your personal career as well), is is so important to not cross your personal social media accounts with your brand accounts. Yes, this was an accident, but it could have been prevented by this social media manager making sure he/she was logged into the correct account prior to posting. But, everyone is human and mistakes do happen.

Have you ever been in a situation where you or anyone on your brand’s social media team accidentally posted onto the wrong account? How did you resolve the situation? Do you feel that there should be more roadblocks in place so that posts like the KitchenAid example don’t happen in the future?