#MarketingCampaigns #insensitive?

Personally, I don't use twitter but it seems to be a great place for both people and companies alike to get noticed. In fact, many companies have been taking advantage of this media to get their products out there free of charge unlike other methods of advertisement. In order to reach the largest markets that they can, companies look for trending hashtags and revolve their tweets around them. However, when marketing teams do this they should at least find out the meaning of the hashtags first...

#Aurora was created or at least only became trending in 2012 after a gunman shot up a cinema in Aurora, Colorado and killed 12 people, injuring 70. People were angry and talking about the incident using #Aurora as a way to spread their disgust of the assailant with others. Finding the seemingly perfect trending hashtag for their product, a clothing company called Celeb Boutique tweeted out:

Their marketing team clearly didn't take the time to find out why it was trending, and because of their ignorance people were very angry, thinking that the company was using this terrible tragedy as a way to market their product. After a few angry tweets directed at them, the company replied with

This happened similarly with a baked goods company named Entenmann's tweeting #notguilty on the same day as the Zimmerman trial outcome, once again causing an outrage from other twitter users.

I believe that these truly were honest mistakes, but if companies want to make use of the social media site to market their product, they should at least find out what they're talking about. 

Just as a side note because I feel it is incredibly ridiculous, according to some news channels, people were supposedly tweeting about the shooting WHILE it was happening.

"Some people reported the shooting via tweets or text messaging rather than calling the police"

Shots fired in the theater. #batman #aurora #colorado

Shooting at aurora movie theater #freakingout :/

These are the only ones I could find, but really? You would rather get a few favourites and retweets to become 'twitter famous' and risk your life more than calling 911 to actually get help? Social networking has really taken a fall with the most recent generations, the desire to become popular on mainstream media sites is just incredible. Some people actually value popularity over their well being, I just don't understand their mindsets. It's rather quite sad...