You don’t have to be a social media or public relations expert to realize that the New York Police Department’s (NYPD) recent and well-intended #myNYPD Twitter campaign quickly turned into an epic fail for the nation’s largest police force. Shortly after issuing an invitation to people to post photos of them posing with the city’s officers, the department received hundreds of images showing New York’s finest engaged in aggressive acts and driving one of the most-trafficked hashtags in the world.
This latest Twitter campaign gone awry joins ranks with epic fails of other brands including JP Morgan Chase and McDonald’s. It also offers marketers an opportunity to learn from the mistakes of others and better prepare themselves to conduct successful social media campaigns on behalf of clients.
In this particular case, the NYPD failed to consider two critical tenets of any social media campaign:
- Know your audience
- The only content you can control is your own
According to social media expert Charlton McIlwain, a professor of media, culture and communication at New York University, the mistake “shows either a profound misunderstanding of how social media works or a profound misunderstanding about popular perception of the NYPD, or probably both.” If the NYPD had, at the very least, considered its audience and their perceptions, which should be considered when developing any strategic social media campaign, they may have avoided what will certainly become one of the year’s most publicized social media backlashes.
In all fairness, the NYPD did also receive some positive images and messages of support from Twitter followers, and some credit can be given to NYPD Commissioner William Bratton who honestly acknowledged to the Associated Press that “the Twitter campaign may not have been fully thought through.” He also went on to say, “It’s not going to cause us to change any of our efforts to be very active on social media. It is what it is. It’s an open, transparent world.”
While the NYPD’s unsuccessful Twitter campaign won’t change their efforts to be very active on social media, I would be willing to wager that the department’s communications team will more diligently consider their audience and potential negative reactions to any social media campaign moving forward.
The following infographic from Cox Blue provides more tips around building a successful social media campaign. For other tips on social media and crisis communications, check out the rest of our blog.
Credit: Cox Blue (CoxBlue.com).