Skip to main content

Social Lessons From KLM Tweet


It was meant as a cheeky tweet from Dutch airlines, KLM, but it ended up pissing almost the whole world. So what went?

KLM tweeted "Aidos Amigos!" #NEDMEX" with reference to the lost by Mexico to Dutch. Sounds innocent, but the whole world found it be "racist".

Wrote The Guardian,
The Hollywood actor Gael García Bernal launched a foul-mouthed Twitter attack on KLM after the airline posted a tweet mocking Mexico and their defeat to Holland.

The A-list star wrote: “I’m never flying your shitty airline again. F--- you big time,” after the Dutch airline posted a picture and an infographic of a sombrero, moustache and serape blanket under the heading “Adios Amigos!”.
So why did KLM drew so much ire?

1. Be Humble In Victory and Gracious In Defeat 

Most sportspeople would have learn that those who are humble in victory and gracious in defeat are the best sportspeople around.

KLM, while trying to celebrate Dutch victory, sounded arrogant in bragging about it. At the end of the day, Mexico did lead and played a great match, only for a 88 min shot and a penalty in injury time to end the dreams of the Mexican.

If KLM did a more gracious tweet celebrating the match and its opponents, it would have gotten more goodwilll.

Humility goes a long way or many retweets. 

2. Your Passengers Are Not Just Dutch

KLM may be a Dutch airline, but given the flat world today, your passengers come from all over the world, including Mexico.

While it is great to celebrate the nation's victory, KLM should have considered that they do have a percentage of passengers, no matter how small, who take the airline.


Alienating your passengers isn't a great idea.

Social media isn't just an exercise of creating new ideas. You also have to consider your audience as Twitter is the medium of retweets.

Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Will mrbrown's post on Mr Tan Kin Lian's thermometer app "misadventure" promote technology ageism?

I am not ashamed to say I support Mr Tan Kin Lian as a presidential candidate because I believed in what he stood for. And when Mr Tan posted his "misadventure" with a thermometer app, I did shake my head in disbelief that he did that. Source:   http://www.mrbrown.com/blog/2013/07/we-could-have-had-him-for-president.html Thinking twice, there could be a possibility that Mr Tan misunderstood how this app work. Most  thermometer app take data from various weather stations to display the temperature on it. Yes, the technology savvy will do a #facepalm when they read the post and mrbrown's post demonstrated it perfectly. Wrote mrbrown , "Maybe the former Presidential-hopeful didn't realize he needed to upgrade to the Pro version of the app. Then his iPhone would not only measure temperature, it would also measure current PSI (PM2.5 included), tell you if you are having your period, and cook instant noodles. Good thing he didn't try to measure boil
Post a Comment
Read more

How UOB's Paper Trail Amplifies IT Greatest Security Threat

UOB required you to do everything on paper. If you want to change your mobile number for your banking account with them or for your credit card, you need to fill up a form. Yet, this paper trail represented a potential security fail for the bank - Human Error. So a bitcoin expert walked into UOB to open a bank account. The bank employee had to print a form from a online pdf document to fill in this bitcoin expert's particulars. When it came to entering the bitcoin expert's email, that's when the forgotten art of handwriting was the most obvious of the digital generation. Wrote Robert Capodieci, My name is Roberto Capodieci, as most of you know. and my email address is very obvious to decode. It is not a p4l_l337_s0u1@gmail.com, but it is a more obvious roberto@capodieci.com, thing that, right after reading my name in the same form, should come out easy. Still, a data entry personnel of the UOB bank (or of a service provider the UOB bank uses) entered it as roberto
1 comment
Read more

NEL Train Fault Shouts Lack Of Crisis Communication

The North-East Line train fault of 11 April 2018 was my virgin experience of a rush hour train fault since I moved to Punggol. One would have thought that with the number of train faults experienced by the North-East Line operator, SBS Transit, they would have improved the communications and handling of train faults. However, my personal experience told another story. First, there were no announcements at the Punggol LRT stations of the train fault even though SBS Transit manages them. The train fault was reported as early as 7.10am as I had a friend who was also stuck in the train. I boarded the LRT at Coral Edge around 7.30am and I didn't hear of any announcement nor was there any signage to inform me o the train fault at Punggol Station. Second, the announcement kept saying that there would be a 15 minutes delay, but 15 minutes passed and the trains, on both side, wasn't moving. If the announcement would be more frank to say it will be a longer delay, commuters would
Post a Comment
Read more