Humor and Social Media: A Cautionary Tale

Back when I used to work for EF Education in their Amsterdam HQ, one of my many duties was to conduct public speaking trainings. In those trainings, we spent a lot of time talking about the need to be careful with humor when speaking in public.

Nothing’s worse than standing at the front of the room and making a joke that no one finds funny (hello crickets!). You make your audience feel uncomfortable, which makes the rest of your speech an uphill battle. Once you've lost your audience, it’s so very hard to get them back.  

Unless you really are funny, then use humor at will.  Successful jokes make you relatable, and engage the audience. They’ll be eager to hear more and will give you their full attention-- not an easy win in this day of mobile distraction.

The problem? Most people aren't self-aware enough to know if they are actually funny... or not.

The same rings true on social media. I see plenty of social media managers attempt to deploy humor in their posts on Twitter, Facebook, etc. When they hit the mark, they win engagement and new followers. But when the joke falls flat, or proves to be downright offensive, the consequences can be dire.

Take this recent example from the (former) social media manager responsible for the Houston Rocket’s brand accounts:

Yes, that’s a horse emoji (symbolizing the Dallas Mavericks) being shot by a gun emoji. I am assuming Houston Rockets social media manager, Chad Shanks, thought this tweet was hilarious. Sadly, many people on Twitter didn’t share his opinion and the Houston Rockets promptly dismissed him. Chad’s response to being sacked:

In contrast, the Dallas Mavericks response to the creepy tweet struck a different tone:

Another classic example of a misguided attempt at humor, is a social media manager thinking they are funny without fully understanding the context of the conversation they are attempting to hijack.

In the aftermath of the Ray Rice domestic violence scandal, thousands of women flocked to twitter to share their short but often heart wrenching stories using #WhyIStayed. Social Media Manager for DiGiorno Pizza wanted to get in on the trending # action and tweeted:

….And commence backlash.  I have to say, however, that I was impressed by the Social Media Manager’s immediate realization of what went wrong and attempt to make it right by personally apologizing to dozens of tweeters who reached out to the brand in protest. The apologies felt genuine and heart-felt, saving what could have been a much worse situation.

But not everyone is repentant in the aftermath of a social media joke gone wrong. Take legendary designer Kenneth Cole. He first got into hot water after posting this callous tweet during 2011’s violent upheaval in Cairo:

Though he later apologized for the insensitive tweet, he took a similar path in 2013 in relation to tensions in Syria:

Clearly this wasn’t humor gone wrong, in Mr. Cole’s eyes. It was (bad) humor gone right, if by 'right' you are referring to getting the brand in the public spotlight, even if under less than favorable circumstances.

In an interview with Details Magazine he said, "Billions of people read my inappropriate, self-promoting tweet, I got a lot of harsh responses, and we hired a crisis management firm," Cole told Details. "If you look at lists of the biggest Twitter gaffes ever, we’re always one through five. But our stock went up that day, our e-commerce business was better, the business at every one of our stores improved, and I picked up 3,000 new followers on Twitter. So on what criteria is this a gaffe?"

Perhaps Mr. Cole can get away with this behavior because it’s his name on the door. I believe very few social media managers would be able to get away with this type of brand awareness strategy, certainly not without C-Suite blessing in advance.

So should social media managers avoid humor all together to stay on the safe side? Absolutely not. Humor wins fans and customers in great numbers when done right.

Here are some of my favorite funny brand moments:

I love it when brands partake in a little social sparring:

Pop-culture humor:

When they can poke fun at themselves:

In order to stay on the profitable side of funny, here are a few recommendations:

1) Pause before publishing.
Its so easy to get caught up in the moment and click publish before truly considering all the different angles of interpretation of your post. If you think even for a moment that the post crosses some boundary between ok and not ok, save it as a draft and get a second or third opinion from a trusted source.

2) Understand the context.
Before stepping into a conversation already in place, make sure you understand what the conversation is about and who the players are. Don’t be rude and interrupt where you don’t belong.

3) Run a test drive.
Take advantage of your private personal networks to test drive a joke before publishing it to a brand. Your personal, gated facebook page, for example. Your network will give you a good indication if your message is really funny... or perhaps not so much.

4) Clear your runway.
Make sure your chain of command (I would go a few steps up the chain) are in agreement with the voice and level of humor you’ve chosen to use on the brand page. If you are using any potentially inflammatory humor, you want to make sure they’ll have your back in advance.

Have you seen a good example of humor gone wrong? I'd love to hear them! 

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