Public Relations & Social Marketing Insight

All your favorite athletes are chillin' at the ESPYs Nokia PreParty. I hear it's awesome. Almost as awesome as this social media PR fail. First, an accidental DeSean Jackson tweet, and then a flurry of other athletes tweeting that precise line.

Most of them, at least, remembered to take out the publicist's note.... [Oh the horror!  But a preventable PR fail.- JD]

A quote in this story from the councilman’s PR guy is priceless—a must read.

Did you hear about the Philadelphia councilman, the politically connected PR guy, and the social media firm?

It’s no joke—although the story is hilarious.

Jim Kenney, a councilman in Philadelphia, is reportedly paying $28,000 in taxpayer money to a firm called ChatterBlast to handle his social media strategy....

Dominick's is (or was) a chain of food stores in the Chicago area that dates back to 1918.  The outfit has gone through several changes of ownership and in 1998 it was bought by Safeway.  Apparently things haven't been going that well because Safeway announced a couple months ago that they would be closing 72 Dominick's stores and laying off more than 6000 people on December 28th.

One of the employees about to get canned -- a young fellow named Steve Yamato --  made a humorous SciFi video which showed dragons, monsters, asteroids etc squashing Dominick's employees and he titled the mini flick: "Thanks Safeway."  Then he posted it on YouTube.

When Yamamoto arrived for his last day of work -- he was told that he was suspended.  Huh?  He (and 6600 other people) were going to be cashiered anyway - but Safeway decided to mop the floor with him as an example for remaining employees perhaps...