Mashable posted an article about the Denny’s restaurant making a print mistake involving their Twitter account. The mistake happened in Nov 2009 and has still had no major correction. If I’ve learned anything from watching social media its that if something happens it can get viral (big) very fast, that includes mistakes. Denny’s mistake was to put the wrong twitter account on their menus, which means since the first printing of their menus they’ve lost possibly thousands potential customers online.
You’d think that Denny’s would have reprinted the menus, but they haven’t gotten around to it yet, so they are hoping to stake claim on their mistakenly printed Twitter name (currently belonging to Dennys Hsieh from Taiwan).
Nothing has been done about this yet, and I’m sure its going to get worse. Mashable wasn’t the first to post on this story, and won’t be the last.
The lesson here is that when dealing with social media, accuracy is needed, and more importantly your reaction needs to be instant. One slip up and the world will know. You could have a great online record for media, but one snag without a fix and your social media life will be criticized. But if you can fix it fast, using any of the publicity from it is advantageous, as compared to the negative publicity now hitting Denny’s.
I just can’t see a large company every overlooking a major marketing flaw like that. Or that they just ignored an error in an area of media that can grow faster than anything we’ve seen in history.
For shame Denny’s.