#SocialMediaFail – Celeb Boutique

For those of you still not on twitter, you missed a major social media blunder this afternoon:

Judging from the included in the post, the twitter user knew exactly what they were doing. They knew that such an insensitive, idiotic tweet would get thousands of re-tweets and potentially some additional press.

I’m confident the tweet was intentional, not a mistake. But the mistake was thinking the tweet was going to lead to anything good. Sure, it’s exposure. I’ve never head of Celeb Boutique until this twitter debacle. But did I follow them? No. Am I likely to become a Celeb Boutique customer? Absolutely not. Is my impression/image of them positive? Quite the opposite. So, was this publicity stunt a mistake? Of course it was.

Although bad reviews are better than no review at all, not all press is good press. There is a point when the controversy pushes people over the edge into never buying your product again. For example, I will never see a Mel Gibson movie, eat at Chic-Fil-A, or purchase books by the author who have burned bridges through their blog tirades. Did the blog tirades garner a lot of press? Absolutely. But I guarantee that press didn’t lead to sales.

When working to obtain press coverage, think long and hard before you go the controversial route. There’s a thin line between gaining popularity and becoming a pariah.

Quick update: @CelebBoutique did remove the post and apologized. However, the fact that I was able to still pull a screenshot proves that a tweet is out there forever, even if you delete it.