We’ve all grown to love social media. It’s a great community for businesses to connect and build relationships with clients, whilst voicing their opinions and most importantly promoting themselves and their brand. It’s also enabled brands to expose themselves like never before and unleash their humorous personalities with brilliant pieces of content marketing, but sometimes businesses have overstepped the mark, in either funny or controversial posts. Here are five examples of recent social media controversy:
Oxford dictionary added the word “Selfie” in its dictionary and it then became “Oxford Dictionaries Word of the Year”. The term ‘selfie’ became popular through social media but it has been debated whether it is actually a word that deserves to be in the dictionary – as well as twerking, hackerspace and even the abbreviations ‘srsly’ (seriously) and ‘apols’ (apologise).
2. ‘Selfie’ then received its own song
The Chainsmokers were inspired to release a song focussed on ‘selfies’ that has amassed over 62 million views!
3. When Paddy Power thought it would be funny to tweet this…
Paddy Power has been at the centre of a lot of controversial PR stunts and campaigns recently and received masses of complaints from this post. They have responded by stating that it was “adult humour for an adult audience”.
4. Tesco’s really regretted tweeting this in the wake of the horsemeat scandal.
5. Our final controversial craze is the #NekNominations
This social media craze saw people mix alcohol with… well just about anything and then “Neck it” and nominate their friends to do the same. Thankfully this craze has settled down now and trends since them have been better natured!
We’d love to hear your suggestions so if you have any stunts you feel have over stepped the mark please feel free to comment below or tweet us @apt_marketing.