Surprisingly, even the biggest companies can be clueless about social media. In the stone age of advertising before the web, when we were still advertising in print and with commercials, you got to define your brand. Consumers didn’t have access to unlimited information about your company and thousands of reviews.
Those days are gone. Your advertising company has completely lost control of your brand image. For some companies, this means trouble. Others are gloriously basking in the glow of social media success. Here are examples–and what you can do to avoid (or mitigate) a disaster.
Social media gone horribly wrong
Oh, Oreo. Americans have loved your cookies for 100 years. We ate it up when you started producing new flavors, double stuff and then thin. Personally, I will eat Key Lime Oreos until I make myself sick. You have a crack social media team, pumping out videos, humor, staging little giveaways. You’re one of the most entertaining brands on Twitter. And Twitter is still going pretty well, because Twitter loves food porn.

Strawberry and Oreo cheesecake pie. pic.twitter.com/xCgrs2c9fL
? Land of Food (@landoffacts) September 20, 2016

And then there’s Facebook.
After all of that stellar image building, an unfounded rumor is destroying the brand. A story about Oreo closing its plants to move production to Mexico is all over social media, and consumers are pissed. Donald Trump mentioned it in a speech. There are memes. It’s bad.
Here’...