Social Media – Page 4 – tonnisha j. english

Yesterday’s VMA’s brought a lot of surprises and shocking moments. From Lady GaGa’s amazing opening performance, to Miley’s twerk session all over the MARRIED Robin Thicke, and even Kanye decided to show up and be nice.

I’m sure you’ll read plenty of blogs about all of that.

The thing that became a WTF Moment for me, was the series of tweets that came from hip-hop magazine XXL. The company decided to let Charlamagne, controversial radio and television personality, take over their twitter account during the VMA’s.

1. This was the craziest and dumbest idea I have ever seen from a business. 2. This PR fail could have easily been avoided.

If you know anything about Charlamagne “Tha God” you know that a filter is something that he does NOT have. “Tha God” tweeted some very mean things about singer/songwriter, Mary Lambert, during her performance with Macklemore on the song “Same Love”. Jennifer Hudson made a surprise appearance and performed the song alongside the duo and Ryan Lewis.

See tweets below:

Why is this a PR fail?

Sure, we all know how Charlamagne is, but that’s his business. Pushing those opinions through via your company’s twitter account is where you begin to tarnish your brand as a unit. Personal opinions, especially to that caliber, should never be spoken under your company’s name. Not only did XXL lose credibility in my eyes, the entire brand to me now is what I would call: a**holes.

If Charlamagne wants to tarnish his own brand by being an a**hole then let him be great. But leave the company out of it.

Now what?

In my opinion, whoever had this bright idea should get the boot. After that, there needs to be a statement released, hopefully apologizing for these harsh tweets and letting their stakeholders know what they will do in the future to prevent this from happening again.

I’m shocked and disgusted that a company would have the audacity to let this kind of behavior occur on their own account. Now lets see what steps they take, if any, to fix it.

“Same Love” – Macklemore, Ryan Lewis, Mary Lambert, Jennifer Hudson

Huffington Post posted an article yesterday that literally gave me chills.

The Coalition to Stop Gun Violence released a PSA that reenacted the altercation of Trayvon Martin and George Zimmerman that lead to the tragic death of the young teen. The ad even has the 911 call from the woman who watched the altercation from her window.

Not only does the PSA reenact this shooting, at the end, there are many other people sprawled out with hoodies that show states on them, including Ohio that represent the death of other fallen victims to gun laws that need to be revisited.

Guns scare me. So naturally watching this PSA made me feel extremely uncomfortable and sad.

Could all or most of these deaths have been prevented if there were better gun laws? Would Zimmerman have been convicted if it weren’t for the Stand Your Ground Law? I don’t know. But what I do know is that something needs to be done to protect people from gun violence. I can’t tell you what that something is because I’m not into law or policy. I can tell you that I do not like living in fear that at any moment if I’m dressed wrong, in the wrong movie screening, or on the wrong college campus at the wrong time that my life could be taken from me.

All of these gun policies are so intricate it gives me a headache.

Check out this PSA and let me know what you think: