When a Tweet Becomes a Bad Quack

by Bruce Morrow

It is with great confidence that I offer the following mathematical postulate:  An increase in the ease of communicating will always result in a commensurate increase in the frequency of stupid things communicated. 

What used to disappear harmlessly into an ether of embarrassed silence now gets published worldwide with an immediacy that would make Johannes Gutenberg’s head spin so fast Linda Blair would turn green with envy. There’s not nearly enough time between the thought and the delivery of it to reconsider sending it in the first place. This is a fatal flaw in the system, and it has exacerbated the already dependable concomitance of speed to error. 

It wasn’t so long ago that you had however long it took you to walk to the mailbox to decide whether to send that scathing letter you’d written. Even a phone call took some time, because you had to dial the number, and—on top of that—you had to say what you had to say to a real person. With faxes you could physically pull the paper out of the feeder before it finished, so that the most your correspondent might get would be a blurred half page that went blank long before he or she got to the name-calling part.

But all this current stuff is like live TV, just waiting for a wardrobe malfunction.

There are too many examples to cite all of them, but one or two stand out as credible evidence for the theory of Ease equals Frequency of Moronic Comments (E=MC²). The most notable recent case is that of the sublime Gilbert Gottfried, whose subtle voicing of the Aflac Duck made advertising history. Now he’s history, having lost the gig for tweeting “jokes” about the earthquake and tsunami in Japan.

Do the math.

The company released a statement saying, “Gilbert’s recent comments... were lacking in humor and certainly do not represent the thoughts and feelings of anyone at Aflac.” They announced a nationwide search for someone to take over the iconic foul’s vocal stylings.

Aflac has always taken very seriously its role as a corporate citizen, and its leaders should be congratulated for handling this anomaly quickly, decisively and in exactly the right way. 

You have to admire their restraint. You know whoever wrote that statement had other words in mind. I would have written, “What an idiot. He’s not funny, and we’ll be hitting him in the head with a bag of rocks today.” Then I would have tweeted it.

In all seriousness, though, there are huge questions associated with the kind of rampant sloppy communication that Twitter, Facebook and texting enable and encourage. Trouble doesn’t have to come in the form of a tasteless joke or a Charlie Sheen rant. It can reveal itself as a simple misplaced word or personal sentiment that changes how a partner, a customer or an entire constituency feels about a company. Any kind of communication, especially one dashed off in fewer than 140 characters, is dangerous in the wrong hands.

In fact, it can even be dangerous in the supposedly right hands. This month the press secretary to Mississippi Governor Haley Barbour was forced to step down after making insensitive comments in widely distributed e-mails. In a USA Today story published on March 18, Democratic strategist Phil Singer described digital media as “gotcha politics on steroids,” and a former spokesman for President Obama said, “there is a lightening quickness to the speed at which candidates can build and dismantle their own campaigns” digitally. Companies are in the same boat.

Back in high school, they used to make us watch a film called Signal-30. It showed, in gory detail, the horrors of traffic accidents, from twisted wreckage to burned and bloodied bodies, all in the interest of scaring us straight to more careful driving. The narrator didn’t even have to lecture us; he simply stated the facts about what happened and what limbs or lives were lost as a result. Some in the class were stunned silent. Others laughed nervously. But, nobody didn’t look. 

Social media train wrecks are like that, too. Gottfried’s Twitter account, RealGilbert, is followed by some 79,000 people, but how many folks do you think heard about his tweets online and in the mainstream media?  His attempt at an apology only added to the morbid curiosity. Who wouldn’t slow down to watch a guy try to use the jaws of life on himself?

The real question is whether we learn anything from this particular bloody accident. The Risk and Insurance Management Society published in its October, 2010 issue of Risk Management an article titled “More Media, More Opportunity, More Risk: the Upside and Downside of Social Media,” in which it explores three distinct areas of risk—damage to the company’s reputation, legal liability for published content and employee workplace issues. It’s a worthwhile read, as it offers six different articles on avoiding the pitfalls of this easy-to-use, easy-to-abuse communication conduit.

One of the articles focuses on IBM’s recognition of the business value of encouraging social media use by its employees, while acknowledging and addressing the inherent risks.

“(T)hey recognized that social media’s use may enhance or degrade customer satisfaction, relationship building, recruiting, retention, brand building and competitiveness.”

As a result, the company established official guidelines covering the “appropriate use” of social media and insisting on education and training as a hedge against the kind of damage that can be done by sloppy communicators.¹ IBM’s action effected enterprise-wide safeguards against the wrong-headed use of social media. In doing so, the company showed leadership and set a proper precedent that we all should follow.

Maybe with clear guidelines and thorough training, those who before might have mindlessly published whatever came into their heads, will pause long enough to choose business-enhancing words and messages instead. 

Otherwise, as a business—dare I say it—we’d better duck.

¹ "IBM’s Delicate Social Media Balancing Act," by William H. Cunningham and Jeff Hunt, ©2010, Risk and Insurance Management Society, Inc.