Tweet With F$%&@#G Care / Or Fake it

The whole Chrysler Twitter story has finally sputtered and juddered to its inevitable conclusion with the US manufacturer dismissing New Media Strategies , the Social Media and Online Reputation Management company who had been running the account.

According to the statement made by the social agency, they had 20 people working on the Chrysler account, and they were hoping that they would be able to find places for them elsewhere within their business.  That seems like quite a highly resourced account.

It appears as though Scott Bartosiewicz, an employee of NMS was using TweetDeck as his client for accessing Twitter in order to be able to use multiple accounts from one machine.  That’s not unusual, I use the Twitter App on my iPhone, and it allows me to Tweet from a few different accounts.  And as they say, anyone can make a mistake – even one that costs you your job.  But something doesn’t quite ring true for me.

Let’s just review this for a second:

According to LinkedIn, New Media Strategies have 122 employees working for them.  If they did have 20 people working on the Chrysler Account, that means it represented about 1/6 of their business.  That’s pretty serious beans.

So serious that the account was run by someone with 8 years experience in Social Media campaigns, and who was relatively senior within NMS:

Account Supervisor for Chrysler

8 years in an industry like ours is a lot.  It’s long enough to know about the risks of tweeting from the wrong account, especially if you’re a prolific tweeter, and also long enough for you to remember to read what you were publishing.

But Wait.  When you look at his Twitter Account, he doesn’t really tweet that much – he’s mostly a FourSquare User:

Tweets

I could point out that his client of choice appears to have changed to being HootSuite following on from his Tweetdeck issues, but that would be uncharitable.  That’s not the point though.  The vast majority of posts that Scott was making across this whole period were Foursquare check-ins, not commentary on his drive to work.  They were also check ins from high end restaurants in LA and the Vanity Fair party at the Oscars – not the kind of place you send a doofus.

I’d also like to point out that on their Google Listing, the SERP Snippet for NMS looks like this:

Global Leader in Online Brand Promotion and Protection services

When you work for an agency that focuses on public relations, brand values are burned onto your soul.

So, what am I saying?

The whole Chrysler story is emphatically not the same as the Vodafone tweeting blow-up, where a customer service person was managing the feed and became abusive to customers.  It’s also different than all the other similar stories about a rogue employee, because this is a professional Social Media person with 8 years of experience in the industry, and who is clearly trusted enough not to say the wrong thing that he is trotted out in front of stars at the Vanity Fair Oscars after party.

People do still get offended by the word fuck.  Americans also get offended by being mocked for any inadequacy.  In Detroit, Motor City, you are probably going to find it pretty easy to get a rise out of people by mocking their driving.

I’m saying that this was faked, but…