Political conservatives who should’ve been paying attention to the game instead of the ads got themselves all fired up over an imagined conspiracy theory about the Chrysler/Clint Eastwood ad that ran during the Super Bowl.
Karl Rove said he was “offended” by the ad, with others on his side of the political spectrum backing up his claims that the clip is an endorsement of President Obama and the auto bailouts.
Create a social media strategy, launch your campaign, and track the results in our Social Media Marketing Boot Camp starting February 16. The online event and workshop will feature speakers including The Onion‘s Baratunde Thurston (left), Facebook’s Morin Oluwole, and bitly’s Tim Devane. Register now.
McDonald’s launched a Twitter hashtag last week, #McDStories, that was meant to generate heartwarming tales of people enjoying time spent with McNugget value meals and the like. Instead, people tweeted stories about things like chipped teeth and foreign objects in their food. HAHA… ugh.
That hashtag was accompanied by another #MeettheFarmers, which the company’s social media director Rick Wion said in a statement to Business Insider was “successful.” However, “#mcdstories did not go as planned. We quickly pulled #mcdstories and it was promoted for less than two hours,” the statement says.
Wion also says that all social media programs have “contingency plans” in case they don’t go as expected. “The ability to change midstream helped this small blip from becoming something larger,” he writes.
We wondered how long this would last. Answer: about 24 hours.
That’s how long it took Verizon to back down from its absurd plan to charge wireless customers $2 for each one-time payment made online or over the phone, a.k.a, in Verizon parlance, the “convenience fee.”
The announcement was made in a press release on the Verizon website. According to the statement, they’re dumping the fee following “customer feedback about the plan, which was designed to improve the efficiency of those transactions.” In other words, the company was being skewered on social media and in the press and decided the $2 wasn’t worth the bad buzz and negative business consequences. Sounds very familiar.
According to The Huffington Post, there was online outcry, petitions, and even talk of an FCC investigation. Rather than charging the fee, the company says it will encourage customers to use one of the existing payment options. The fee was meant to go into effect in January.
GoDaddy has been busting the boundaries of good taste with its advertising for years. This year, CEO Bob Parsons went a step further by adding animal cruelty to the list of offenses. But none of that has compared to the backlash against the company over its support for Stop Online Piracy Act.
The two sides of SOPA have been going at it since October, with tech companies like Google, Facebook, and Twitter staunchly against it and entertainment companies among the biggest supporters. CNET has got an FAQ on the issue and we’ve covered the outreach from both sides here.
GoDaddy had been on the list of SOPA supporters before it released this statement saying it changed its mind. GoDaddy supported SOPA? That is something people simply will not allow.
The holidays aren’t so jolly for FedEx, which is now battling bad press and late-night jokes after one of its “couriers” was caught on tape tossing a computer monitor over a fence. The monitor broke, the video is viral (and available after the jump), and the damage control has begun.
Matthew Thornton, the SVP of U.S. operations for the company, has filmed a video of his own and issued a statement on the company’s website stating how sorry and embarrassed the company is, restating its customer service standards, and assuring us that the issue has been resolved with the customer.
Also, he wants to make it clear that this was an isolated incident. “It is one person and one package,” he writes.
Has Words With Friends-gate finally reached its finale?
Alec Baldwin appeared on SNL this weekend dressed as American Airlines’ “Capt. Steve Rogers” to apologize to the star, talk up how wonderful his is, and explain why any normal person playing Words With Friends would leave their seat and slam the lavatory door as the plane is about to take off.
One PR blogger thinks the skit was a good move. Your thoughts?
Apparently, with Herman Cain out of the GOP race, Rick Perry has decided to become the new gaffe machine.
Over the weekend, Perry added to the list when he called Solyndra, the bankrupt solar energy company that is causing problems for the Obama administration, a country. After the Iowa debate on Saturday, Perry stuck around and talk to people. That’s when trouble ensued.
“No greater example of it than this administration sending millions of dollars into the solar industry, and we lost that money,” Perry said, discussing what he says has been the President’s mishandling of government spending. “I want to say it was over $500 million that went to the country Solynda.” Not only did he call it a country, he forgot the “r.” Oh you, Rick Perry.
Earlier today, Herman Cain taught us a lesson about using words carefully. Now Paypal is teaching us to use our rules carefully.
Regretsy.com, a site that pokes fun at ridiculous things they find on Etsy, decided to be nice and try to raise money to buy Christmas gifts for needy kids. We don’t fully understand what happened — it looks like they broke a rule about using something reserved for nonprofits — but Paypal tried to shut down the effort.
Rule number one for avoiding bad press and being a good citizen of the world: Do not interfere negatively with any effort to help needy children.
Hilary Swank made an appearance on The Tonight Show with Jay Leno to promote her movie New Year’s Eve, talk about the eggs she just bought, and tell the world that she now knows she should do her research before going to a suspected human rights violator’s birthday party.
You’ll recall, Swank got into trouble for making an appearance at an event for Chechen president Ramzan Kadyrov (Jean Claude Van Damme and Seal a.k.a. Mr. Heidi Klum were also there). The Human Rights Foundation says they tried to warn her. Swank has apologized, donated the money, and has fired a few people over the issue. Her PR firm, 42West dumped her because of it.
Last night, Swank continued to explain, with help from Leno who tossed her a few softballs and made up some excuse about celebrities being dopes and just getting on planes when they’re told to.
Lt. Pike pepper-spraying the subject of Andrew Wyeth's painting "Christina's World."
Video of a UC Davis campus cop, Lt. John Pike, in full riot gear confronting peaceful student demonstrators and then casually pepper-spraying them went viral on Friday. The reaction from authorities to the viral clip has been swift: two police officers and the police chief were placed on leave, and UC President Mark Yudof has called for a review of police procedures across the entire system.
The school said in a statement that police Chief Annette Spicuzza was placed on “administrative leave to restore trust and calm tensions.” The campus is in an uproar. And rightfully so.
Besides the damage that this has been done by this truly disturbing video, a clever Internet meme has popped up to comment on the outrage.
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