I saw this post on Mashable that shows an outcry on social media shaming a company that offended a group with their product, and it made me think of something. People cannot hold grudges on social media.
I know there have been many events that have blown up on social media because of a brand messing up, but I can’t remember any of them. Companies that either unintentionally or recklessly posted racist, sexist, or highly offensive material. It happens all the time, but it always seems to blow over quickly.
When a campaign is going on, it’s the biggist and most important thing in your life, until you get bored. It’s like when you change your Facebook profile picture to show you’re support for France. Three months later you want to change your picture; what do you not support France anymore? “Yeah I still like France I guess but it’s not relevant.” It’s not like changing your profile picture did anything in the first place anyway.
The point is, people forget extremely fast nowadays. I think our attention span has devolved because of the rapid influx of new information coming from social media, and that allows mistakes to be not very cost-worthy. Who cares that your company accidentally offended a quarter of the population if it’ll all blow over in a month? (I don’t actually feel this way but it seems like there are rarely repercussions for theses things.)
Granted I think people should be forgiven for their mistakes if they are truly sorry, but right now if companies drop the ball somewhere they easily pick it back up. I wonder if the problem in the post i linked will even be relevant in a week. I personally don’t think it will.
