Within the last two weeks, Chrysler Group ended it's long-standing relationship with their social media agency over a vulgar tweet that was posted to the official Chrysler Brand Twitter Account. Crazy!
The tweet was posted Wednesday March 9th, 2011 by New Media Strategies and read 'I find it ironic that Detroit is known as the Motor-city and yet no one here knows how to f*****g drive'. The tweet was removed shortly after being posted, but to no avail.
Chrysler immediately made a statement the next day that it won't be renewing its contract with New Media Strategies for the rest of this year but noted that it will work with the agency through the transition period until it names a new marketing firm.
The Michigan based auto-manufacturer apologized in a blog post saying that the employee responsible for the tweet had been fired. In a follow up post, Chrysler said that the post had been meant for the employee's personal Twitter profile rather than Chrysler's and that they had not demanded the person be fired. Needless to say, it was a fireable offense in and of itself knowing how much social media runs the world these days.
The CEO of NMS, Pete Snyder said, his firm regretted the 'incident'.
"It doesn't accurately reflect the high-quality work we have done for Chrysler", he said in a statement, "We respect their decision and will work with them to ensure an effective transition of this business going forward."
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To a company who deals in a lot of social media marketing, reputation management and SEO services, this is outrageous. Integraphix believes whole heartedly in ethical SEO, even down to our employees being good and ethical people. The fact stands that even though that tweet was meant for a personal twitter account and YES free speech is an issue here, an employee has a particular image to uphold for the company they're working for AND the companies they represent.
New Media Solutions was in their rights to fire this employee. Ethical SEO and Search Engine Optimization Companies in general sometimes gets a bad wrap sometimes for being shady and the stories that have come out recently about black-hat SEO have not helped us much.
What can you do? Question your Chicago SEO Firm and ask them about their social media ethics. Ask who will be handling your social media marketing and make sure you're comfortable with who you're working with!
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Integraphix, one of the Top Marketing Companies in Chicago | www.integraphix.com
847.537.0067 or email us at info@integraphix.com for more information on Ethical SEO in Chicago
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