hugh donagher

Always remember the sage wisdom that business doesn’t mix well with politics and religion. Or be prepared to pay the price. The folks at San Antonio’s Brown Coffee Company are paying the price for mixing them all together in one very unfortunate tweet.

The tweet, posted at 11:55 p.m. on Friday, June 24th, shortly after New York passed its marriage equality legislation, read thus:

BrownCoffeeCo: No human law can ever legitimize what natural law precludes #SorryFolks #NotEqual #WhyBother #ChasingAfterTheWind #SelfEvident

As one might expect, this unleashed a firestorm in the Twitterverse. Now, politics and religion aside, folks, let’s look at BCC’s response, and try to learn from it. Herewith, my “Case Study of a Social Media Gaffe.”

• On Saturday the 25th, as the negative comments started rolling in from all quarters, BCC’s response was to tweet something to the effect of “So much for diversity of thought in the modern age.” Then they locked down their Twitter feed — requiring permission to view it. At this writing it remains locked down. Some reports indicate that the tweet was deleted even before the feed was locked down.
• As negative comments began to populate BCC’s Facebook page, they were actively curating content there, deleting negative remarks and removing photos with identifiable faces from their albums. At some point overnight between the 25th and the 26th, the Facebook page was also shut down.

The net effect of these actions was to give the impression that they were running scared and circling the wagons. This underscored the offensive nature of the tweet.

• On Monday, BCC lost a vendor, when one of their retailers from New York City posted that they would not stand for intolerance and bigotry, and publicly severed their ties with Brown.
• On Tuesday, three full days after the initial tweet, Brown finally issued a clarification, “Correcting The Record,” on their company blog. But their clarification sought only to blame everyone else for misunderstanding their words and their intentions. Frankly, it comes off as petulantly lashing out at the entire internet.
• Comments on the blog are moderated, and the sole comment that has cleared moderation is a glowing, positive statement about the company and the folks who work there. No comment critical of the company has been approved, though they have undoubtedly received many such comments.

Okay, so what are the takeaways here?

• Never, ever use your business account to tweet your personal opinions on political or religious matters.
• Silence/Retreat = Guilt, whether it is deserved or not.
• Actively curating content so that only positive comments supporting your company come through is so blantantly obvious as to be offensive to your followers, and it kills any credibility you might have had.
• Defiantly arguing that the rest of the world misunderstood your comment and/or intentions and then casting yourself as the victim only makes the problem worse. If your comment was universally misunderstood, you screwed up, plain and simple. Don’t shoot the messenger. Instead, craft a thoughtful, apologetic response. Engage in a dialogue with those you’ve upset.

When you make a misstep in the social media arena — and many have done so — it is best to quickly get out in front of the controversy. Own it, apologize for it, make such amends as are necessary and let your followers know that you have learned from your mistake and will modify future behavior to incorporate the lesson(s) learned.

One final thought: Think before you tweet; 140 characters is just enough to bring a world of pain down on yourself.

UPDATE: 6/28 7:00 p.m.

Brown Coffee Company has issued a formal apology on their website. It reads:

“We at the Brown Coffee Company would like to issue a formal apology for a hurtful Twitter post that was put out on our company’s Twitter profile. We want to say for the record that everyone in this small family company is deeply regretful of all the offense we have caused everyone in this situation. We are truly sorry to have offended all the people we have offended. That kind of awful bigotry, hatred and slander has never been and will never be something we believe in and/or post and we are sorry to anyone who has seen this.

That Twitter post was contrary to everything we have strived to be as a company: one that enjoys life and enjoys people, regardless of personal beliefs. Those in the community who know us personally know that we are not hateful, spiteful, bigoted, intolerant people.

Thank you very much for giving us the opportunity to tell our side of the story. We humbly stand before anyone reading this and ask for your forgiveness for all the terrible things this stupid Twitter post has become and for all the offense it has caused to good people.”