Someone tweeting for @KitchenAidUSA posted “Obamas gma even knew it was going 2 b bad! ‘She died 3 days b4 he became president’. #nbcpolitics” during the debate. It was immediately taken down and replaced with this apology: “Deepest apologies for an irresponsible tweet that is in no way a representation of the brand’s opinion. #nbcpolitics”
This is not an excuse, but it’s likely this was an accident. Someone tweeted using the company account instead of their personal account. However, the repercussions are mounting. Within an hour, both Adweek and Mashable had stories on this.
The best thing for KitchenAid to do is explain what happened, then fire the person (or have the agency fire the person) who tweeted it. Someone needs to be held accountable. If no one is punished for this, then KitchenAid deserves to keep getting its ass kicked in the social media world.
No punishment is like KitchenAid saying this incident was acceptable, and that it doesn’t mind insensitive jokes (no matter which side of the aisle you’re on, the tweet was still out of place).
Update:
New tweets from @KitchenAidUSA:
“Hello, everyone. My name is Cynthia Soledad, and I am the head of the KitchenAid brand.”
“I would like to personally apologize to President @BarackObama, his family and everyone on Twitter for the offensive tweet sent earlier.”
“It was carelessly sent in error by a member of our Twitter team who, needless to say, won’t be tweeting for us anymore.”
“That said, I take full responsibility for my team. Thank you for hearing me out.”
Revelation PR, Advertising & Social Media won a PRSA-Madison Award of Excellence for the second straight year, this time in the category of integrated communications, in last week’s annual Alchemy Awards.