8 Great Social Media Crisis Management Examples

Today in my social media marketing class for UMSL, I spoke about several crisis management examples involving social media. They are:

1. What was intended to be a promotion for the company quickly became a PR nightmare when McDonalds' new feature, the “McStory” (#McDStories) opened them up for bad publicity. 
2. A Nestle employee becomes overly defensive in an online argument causing many people to abandon the company altogether.
3. After hours of very unusual tweets from @BurgerKing, followers began to notice that something was off. Fortunately, the tweets were humorous but could have been devastating had they been offensive. 
4. Abercrombie jokingly asked “Jersey Shore” cast member Mike Sorrentino to refrain from wearing their clothing as a marketing scheme. Unfortunately, the actor did not find this joke humorous and sued the company for $4 million.
5. Lowe’s pulled advertisements from the show “All-American Muslim” after a conservative Christian group complained. This caused a major backlash as thousands of Americans accused the company of bigotry. 
6. A video of a Federal Express delivery man throwing – and breaking – a computer monitor went viral almost instantly at the worst possible time: the holiday season. 
7. Associated Press hacked tweet causes stocks to plunge
8. A Red Cross intern mistakenly tweeted from the company’s official page rather than his personal twitter account.