I have been thinking about this ever since you posted this Gini. On one hand, my thought is, what an idiot - just don't swear on the internet. Of course, my preferred method of communicating is ripe with expletives and I do suffer from road rage, so I can understand where he is coming from. But on a much deeper level - I think this perpetuates a growing dilemma in the American Workplace - that Corporations are priority one and individuals come in a distant second. From tax structure to legislation to the very treatment of people and customers...Corporate America is allowed to do/act unfairly, without passion, without integrity and without consequence. This agency fired its employee within hours of his tweet. No thought, no compassion, it did not defend him and move on. It does not care that they have thrown him out into an impossible job market. A job market that is made worse in Detroit by THEIR CLIENT! What is really troubling is this client made MANY MANY HUGE mistakes and was 'forgiven' by the taxpayer by the tune of $7B. When does the taxpayer (or employee) get an ounce of forgiveness? Thy hypocrisy of this situation is just baffling.

I've been chatting with people about this over the past few days (surprised at how many people are aware of it) and no one has any doubts that Chrysler ordered the employee fired, and then fired the agency when that order blew up in its face. Interestingly, several mentioned a company that used Eminem in its ads should be able to handle an accidental f-bomb.

OK everyone pay up. I was right. CBS has now reported the employee did make the mistake I mentioned of running more than one account from his phone and posting to the wrong stream.

BUT now we have other questions. Chrysler fired the agency. This put 20 people out of work (so the Agency claims). I frame the next question blindly. Should Chrysler have fired the agency. What else was the agency doing for Chrysler? 20 people is a lot. How long has the Agency been working with Chrysler? Was the work good enough and for long enough to prevent the firing? Obviously not. But was it good enough to say Chrysler over reacted?

Did Groupon fire CPB for the horrible Superbowl Ads? Wasn't those worse?

Here is the post @jgombita http://tinyurl.com/6avpjxh this post had an agency perspective I found interesting.

As a student I am weary of mistakes like this so it is refreshing to hear your professional perspective. I totally agree that social media should be handled in-house, that is one of the benefits of social media as opposed to traditional media platforms. The blame should not fall on one person here; there are some valuable takeaways for all involved parties (client, agency, and individual).

We all have all made mistakes in our careers-my first project here at HMA comes to mind. It had to do with Vanna White and the mattress company she was spokesperson for -- to this day I don't know which one it was. But we owned up to it, made good and moved on. We had the client for several years.

Difference is back in the good old days, you know, before the Internet, we weren't in such a hurry to get things done and out the door. We took a little more time to review information. And mistakes were still made. Today's instant, gotta get it out now, world we live in, means more mistakes are made and they're made faster.

Gini, I agree, we may never know exactly what happened here. Whether it was a mistake like Chrysler or Red Cross, or insensitivity like Kenneth Cole and the AFLAC guy, technology gives us great power but with it comes great responsibility. So once again, be careful what you Tweet.

The errant Tweet and Chrysler's response has got people talking, that's for sure. Agreed that we all make mistakes, but this was a particularly unfortunate one, given the "Imported from Detroit" campaign that the company had recently launched. Ultimately, this gaffe could be perceived as a boost for the company's brand, if you subscribe to the theory about any publicity being good publicity...

We wrote today about how companies can avoid these sorts of mistakes by implementing concise yet effective social media policies; this incident is no excuse to avoid outsourcing your social media activity as it could have just as easily happened to an internal resource. Read more: http://bit.ly/g17B4G

Agreed-- it can certainly be rough to handle more than one account, and I feel bad for the person who made the mistake. It's unfortunate they had to be fired. :(

Gini,

Your post brought back some stomach-churning memories of mistakes past. If I had been fired for each mistake I made, I'd have had 20,000 jobs and probably be cleaning toilets by now. I think it was worse, though, when I had to call a client about a mistake someone on the team made. I felt responsible for it even then.

Personally, I think Chrysler made a big mistake in firing the agency. The Super Bowl ad was all about the company being tough, grounded, and a little gritty. That persona uses the f-bomb. Just say...

The bad part of this situation for me, is that this could have been prevented before the tweet was even written.

After tweeting to the wrong account last year, I downloaded another Twitter app on my phone and moved over my personal account so I would never have to even think about posting to a client account. No issues since.

@barryrsilver I definitely agree with this! -- "Still the proper order is Ready, Aim, Fire (or Type, Read,(pause),Send) . no matter which account is being used." -- It's easy to vent online but those feelings are usually fleeting; The internet is rather permanent...and in this case - Type, pause, do not send.

Hold on... the screen shot includes the time stamp "about 3 hours ago via web"? Am I reading that right? WEB?!

I fully understand tweeting from the wrong account on your phone, or on your Hootsuite Dashboard (if you check/uncheck the various wrong box), but ON THE WEB?! How do you "tweet from the wrong account" on web Twitter? Unbelievable.

The sad part of this situation for me, is that this could have been prevented before the tweet was even written.

After tweeting to the wrong account last year, I downloaded another Twitter app on my phone and moved over my personal account so I would never have to even think about posting to a client account. No issues since.

@barryrsilver I definitely agree with this! -- "Still the proper order is Ready, Aim, Fire (or Type, Read,(pause),Send) . no matter which account is being used." -- It's easy to vent online but those feelings are usually fleeting; The internet is rather permanent...and in this case - Type, pause, do not send.

P,lease help me. I'm not getting it. Cursing in public should be avoided at all costs but yes it does happen. I remember my son throwing a deity damn and he didn't learn it on Sesame Street. The unforgivable is the insult to Detroit drivers on behalf of a car manufacturer .. Then Chrysler tries a make good by firing the agency and the agency tries a make good by firing an employee and no one takes responsibility or apologizes. Any relating to the public going on? How's the image building going? Mistakes happen. I puked up a piece of customer service just last week but with experience the bells kept ringing and I corrected it within a couple of minutes.No harm done and yes I started with an apology.

Gini,

I cut my teeth on an airline account -- "always call the number" was a mantra... in fact, when the res folks answered, we'd just say "it's the agency" and they'd laugh..I swear I think they posted it somewhere in Res training that you can often expect our ad agency to call you.

And like you, I too made a serious error early in my career and I think our two bosses must have known each other because the response was the same -- it happens, and I'm pretty sure you'll never do that again... true to form, never have.

You're right, probably only two people in the world know the whole story. But I have to say, you just can't make that mistake. Money can be replaced, rather easily, but reputation once sullied is far more difficult to repair. I so often see agency folks (that I know are also tweeting for brands) and they're dropping F bombs and all kind of other crude stuff in their public stream... it's only a matter of time before one of those crude tweets goes out under the wrong identity.

In fact, I'm surprised agencies and brands for that matter don't do more to police employee accounts... at least for those folks that have access to the corp accounts.

Great post...

@tommartin

Great story Gini.

Although I agree there are many ways to look at the issue, ultimately I have to say I believe it's a matter of personal responsibility. In my opinion this person should have thought about the fact that they are managing multiple twitter accounts before they decided to make their oh so personal tweet public by accident. I think they should have considered that perhaps they lose the right to drop f-bombs via twitter because of their increase exposure. I think all of us social media users need to think before we tweet, retweet, and like. At the end of the day the individual user is control of their actions, reactions and thoughts. In that regard, I feel they should be responsible for them too. :)

My first thoughts upon reading the tweet were (a) awesome and (b) this is absolutely part of a campaign, not a rogue tweet. If they're hiring Eminem as a pitchman, this is exactly the kind of tweet they SHOULD be writing. I'm also suspicious of everything that happened afterward. When was the last time Chrysler got this much discussion, nineteensixtynever?

I think the biggest mistake Chrysler made was firing the company. We've all had similar thoughts, which is why it was so funny; if they had said, "we genuinely apologize to our autoworkers and anyone who took offense at our previous tweet; we'd have responded sooner, but we had to fill out this accident report," they're instant twitter legends. Instead, they respond conservatively when I'd guess that of their consumers likely to be offended by that tweet, 99% aren't even on twitter and don't care about it. And if you want the twitter demo, this kind of spineless scapegoating is the quickest way to lose them.

KNOW YOUR AUDIENCE. Chrysler didn't.

Finally, to the good gentleman who finds users of profanity "uncouth, unintelligent, and uneducated," I respectfully submit that you display those very qualities by invoking this blanket statement, and that using personal taste to define someone else speaks only to an insecurity about possessing those same qualities yourself. Manners and decency are not about using the right words or the correct fork; they're about making the other person feel comfortable, even if they fail to extend the same courtesy to you. I daresay you've done the exact opposite.

Thanks for these posts and for reading mine.

Archibald

I think your biggest point here, and btw @Griddy and I are proud of this post's length and depth, is why does Chrysler not have this in house? Normally the reason this get's outsourced is due to lack of resources not lack of know how.

You already know my view of the F-n F-Bomb itself. They need more F-n F-Bombs or they have to fire F-n M&M or remove him from that F-n commercial. Actually after seeing the F-n U of Michigan Fab 5 documentary last night...street cred in F-n Detroit is all about the F-Bomb. So unless they are moving their HQ to say polite Charleston South Carolina....

Anyone that has worked in any profession has one or two of those "OMIGOD, I've done it." moments that hopefully we survive. I don't know anything about NMS but I would assume whoever they had tweeting for Chrysler had experience because I assume Chrysler is a major account. So I ask NMS how is it possible that an experienced employee would "firebomb" drivers in Detroit on behalf of a car manufacturer HQ in Detroit, let alone use profanity publicly? What is broken in the NMS culture that allowed this to happen.?Yes something is broken. To hang it solely on the employee is to manage like an ostrich.

This is the social media gaffe (flavor) of the week and the firestorm is always in the reaction. Owning up to the mistake is the best way to diffuse the situation. Then we'd all be here talking about how wonderful Chrysler is. and the agency. Your story illustrates it perfectly and I am betting most of us know that feeling well. The first reaction is to find someone to whom you can't point a finger, and then, the realization (hopefully) hits that you you have to step up and take accountability yourself.

This may be one of those situations where they reacted too quickly. Or perhaps as you suggest, there were extenuating circumstances and the agency was on their way out the door anyway.