Just Because You CAN Post It On Facebook Doesn’t Mean You Should
All of the top social media experts will tell brands that it’s a good idea to tie themselves in with things going on in the world: pop culture, items in the news, or significant days of the year. If done well, these kinds of opportunities are great unifiers that can make your brand seem relevant and timely. Or you could do what KCDeliver.com did.
As best I can tell, KCDeliver.com is some kind of delivery service that works with local restaurants. It also is tone deaf bordering on offensive with its most recent Facebook post tied to Martin Luther King, Junior Day. In an attempt to make a cute play on Dr. King’s “I have a dream” speech, KCDeliver.com made the below post on its Facebook page leading into the 2016 MLK Day observance.
Yep. They used an image of one of the most iconic civicl rights leaders in history, a man who inspired a nation and who was murdered in cold blood. And they made a dumb joke promoting free food delivery. “Dreaming of free delivery from your favorite restaurant? With KCDeliver.com your dreams have come true,” is what the text says. Unbelievable.
One of the advantages of social media is that content can be created quickly and shared quickly. That means brands place a lot of trust into the hands of the people who manage their accounts. In this case, KCDeliver.com is not only representing its own company, it’s also representing the brands of the restaurants it works with, all of whom are mentioned in hashtags in the Facebook post. When just one person or a small group of people have that kind of power, it can be a blessing and a curse. I would like to think that if more than one person had a chance to preview this post before it went up, someone would have said, “hey, instead of making light of a great man and one of the most powerful speeches ever given, let’s just not say anything today.” I would like to think that. But as of noon on January 18th the post had been up for 22 hours, multiple people have commented negatively about it, multiple people have shared it. And there’s no sign of it coming down.
So not only do you make a poor decision by creating the content, you also do a disservice to your brand by not responding quickly when it’s clear you have made a mistake. I wonder if their social media team is not acting quickly to remedy their gaffe because they have the day off. You know, to observe Martin Luther King, Junior Day.
