Things happen in our day-to-day life. We make mistakes and (hopefully) learn from them. The good thing about most of our day-to-day mistakes is that they are not archived on social media for the entire world to see. On the other hand, brands, including large corporations, celebrities, and influencers don’t get this type of privacy or grace when they post online. If it’s posted and it’s bad, it’s bad — at least until the next bad tweet goes viral. The ProblemLet’s use the accidentally-racially-charged Clorox tweet from 2015 as an example. As you can see in the above tweet, Clorox made an unfortunate “bleach” reference about emojis the same day Apple released a number of racially diverse emojis. If you put two and two together, it seems like Clorox is alluding to the bleaching of the racially diverse emojis. To further understand the consequences and context of the digital communication breakdown, let’s rhetorically analyze the situation. To begin, the context of the tweet was its downfall. Clorox was trying to be relevant by tweeting about the new Apple emojis, probably because the topic was trending. What Clorox failed to realize was what emojis were released and how that may play into the content of their tweet. If only food or transportation emojis were released that day, the outcome would have been different for Clorox. Thus, the context surrounding the tweet was a catalyst for backlash. The audience of Clorox’s tweet was also a reason for the communication breakdown. That’s because the audience — Twitter — pays close attention to things like political correctness and advocating for the marginalized, from what I’ve seen. Twitter is also an audience that likes to pick things to pieces — anything from people (Justine Sacco) to corporations to politicians — in a different way than Facebookers or Instagrammers would do. I wonder how the situation would have differed if the content was posted on a different platform. The author of the post also contributes to the breakdown. Technically the author was an individual person who pressed the “tweet it” button, but all Twitter users see is the Clorox name, the Clorox logo, and a verified check mark. This may have given users more of an incentive to come after the company, both because the Twitter profile isn't an individual person and because the company’s social media professional should know better. However, I hate to argue this perspective because, on the other hand, Twitter users attacked individual Justine Sacco, the PR professional who tweeted an off-the-cuff AIDS joke that ruined her life. Twitter didn’t care that she was an individual instead of a corporation; they just wanted her to pay for her tweet. Moving on, I think that the genre of the content seems like a less important factor but really it’s more important as we look closer. One aspect of the tweet that I haven’t touched on is the fact that the original tweet included a photo of a bottle of Clorox bleach made up entirely of emojis. Because the tweet includes a photo, it’s clear that Clorox was ready for the Apple emojis to drop. They were so ready that they created a detailed graphic. In other words, the bleach emoji tweet wasn’t an off-the-cuff tweet. But even though they prepared for the emoji drop, they obviously didn’t look into what emojis were being release and then analyze their tweet within that context. Ultimately I believe that the purpose of the tweet was to be relevant as best as they could be. It’s got to be hard to run a bleach company’s social media as far as interesting and relevant content goes. I don’t believe Clorox or the Clorox employee was being malicious or racist but that they failed to see any negative connection between their tweet and the emojis. They also probably failed to do their research before tweeting, and it cost them some bad press — although not nearly as bad as Justine Sacco. The SolutionClorox, after realizing its transgression, tweeted a second apology tweet: In my opinion, the humor of their “apology” tweet falls short, although I do think they did the right thing by apologizing in a timely manner to their audience. The first sentence was cheesy. The second sentence offered an explanation of the first tweet’s purpose but still leaves me shaking my head. If I were Clorox, I would have scratched reference to “bleach[ing] away” and the emojis and taken a corporate-serious tone with a problem as serious as racial bleaching. Luckily, they do a corporate-serious apology with their spokeswomen, Rita Gorenberg: “We apologize to the many people who thought our tweet about the new emojis was insensitive. It was never our intention to offend. We did not mean for this to be taken as a specific reference to the diversity emojis – but we should have been more aware of the news around this. The tweet was meant to be light-hearted but it fell flat.” This apology by a Clorox spokeswoman was well done, and I feel a shortened version may have been appropriate on Twitter.
Overall I hope this Clorox case study serves an example of what-not-to-do for companies. It’s important not to isolate yourself into a bubble, away from the world and the news of current events. Brands, this example is one of the reasons that it’s extremely important to be cautious when scheduling posts or press releases to go out at the later date — you never know what the surrounding context will be on that date. Although sometimes we wish we could bleach away our day-to-day mistakes, it’s better to learn and grow from them, both as companies and as individuals. Read more about the Clorox/emoji blunder here: https://www.usatoday.com/story/money/2015/04/09/clorox-tweet-twitter-emojis-apple-update/25541671/ https://money.cnn.com/2015/04/09/technology/clorox-emoji-tweet/index.html
1 Comment
Jack Trebel
11/14/2018 10:12:36 am
Very well analyzed and well written article. Although, I do agree their apology was quite cheesy, I do find it appropriate to the situation. Because, yes, there was a technical miscommunication, but it seems that people made a much bigger deal of this than it needed to be. There is nothing in the original tweet that says anything about race. Yes contextually you could reach and make it a racial issue, but you can do that about anything really. The fact that they used a picture of their product clearly defines for me that they are referring to themselves instead referring to making every emoji caucasian. Sometimes people need to just chill out a little bit.. haha
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