Daily Archives: March 14, 2011

Chrysler’s Twitter Account Drops the F-Bomb, Agency Employee Sacked

Public Relations, Social Media

Last week, Chrysler’s Twitter account (@ChryslerAutos) Tweeted out the following message (censored by me):

I find it ironic that Detroit is known as the #motorcity and yet no one here knows how to f%$king drive

Car blog Jalopnik has had the most comprehensive coverage of the slip-up, and revealed that an employee at Chrysler’s social media agency — New Media Strategies — authored the Tweet. Chrysler tweeted an apology, ordered the employee responsible terminated, and post the following mea culpa on the Chrysler blog (excerpt below):

This morning an inappropriate comment was issued from the Chrysler brand Twitter handle, @ChryslerAutos, via our social media agency of record, New Media Strategies (NMS). After further investigation, it was discovered that the statement was issued by an NMS employee, who has since been terminated.

Mistakes can happen to everyone, but the event underscores the need for PR and social media types to be careful about who is posting what on their Twitter accounts, especially if they’re managing the account on behalf of a client. What’s your take?

Follow Jeff James on Twitter at @jeffjames3.

Follow ContentShift on Twitter at @contentshift.

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