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1. 10. KitchenAid tweeted about Obama's dead grandma.
During one of the presidential
debates, KitchenAid tweeted to its
24,000 fans that " Obamas gma even
knew it was going 2 b bad! ‘She died 3
days b4 he became
president’. #nbcpolitics".
KitchenAid immediately deleted the
quote and tweeted an apology.
A spokesperson said that "The tasteless
joke in no way represents our values at
KitchenAid, and that person won't be
tweeting for us anymore."

2. 9. American Apparel exploits Hurricane Sandy.
People were outraged when American Apparel
used Hurricane Sandy — a storm that killed
over 100 people and initially left 8 million
without power— as an excuse to sell
merchandise.
The retailer were offered a 20 percent off sale
if they typed "SANDYSALE" in the online
checkout "in case you're bored during the
storm."
American Apparel decided to ignore the PR
disaster and didn't apologize.
Gap, on the other hand, also did a Sandy sale
and then tweeted apologies for offending
people.

3. 8, The NRA's magazine posted an insensitive
tweet after the Aurora shooting.
Hours after the nation learned about the tragic
Aurora shooting that left 12 people dead at a late
night showing of "The Dark Night Rises," American
Rifleman, a magazine for the NRA, tweeted: "Good
morning, shooters. Happy Friday! Weekend plans?"
The tweet went up at 9:20 am EST and was taken
down three hours later.
A spokesman for the NRA stated, "A single
individual, unaware of events in Colorado, tweeted
a comment that is being completely taken out of
context."
PR lesson: be careful with pre-scheduled tweets.

4. 7. Apple Maps was so bad, the CEO had to
issue a public apology.
When Apple banished Google Maps from the
iPhone in September, consumers were
concerned.
Apple's own maps app turned out to be
riddled with errors, and didn't even include
public transportation mapping.
CEO Tim Cook had to issue a public
apology, conceding that the maps "fell short"
before suggesting users download
competitors' products from the Apps store.
Cook specifically called out Bing, MapQuest, or
going to Nokia and Google's website.
The product manager who oversaw the maps
team was fired months later.

5. 6. The Internet exposes a Burger King
employee who stood in tubs of lettuce.
In July, a Burger King employee thought that it
would be a fun idea to post pictures on 4Chan
of him standing (shoes on) in two large tubs of
lettuce. The caption read: "This is the lettuce
you eat at Burger King."
Within minutes, other 4Chan members tracked
down the culprit.
Burger King addressed the PR disaster in a
public statement regarding the chain's "zero-
tolerance policy against any violations such as
the one in question" and fired three
employees for the incident.

6. 5. A Taco Bell employee tweeted a picture of
himself urinating on a plate of nachos.
Even though the Indiana worker assured
people that the plate was going to be thrown
out anyway, Taco Bell dealt with the crisis
immediately by firing him.

7. 4. Chick-fil -A's president bashes gay marriage.
Chick-fil -A caused quite a stir when its
president publicly came out against gay
marriage.
Dan Cathy, who also serves as the COO, told
"The Ken Coleman Show": "I think we are
inviting God’s judgment on our nation when
we shake our fist at Him and say, ‘We know
better than you as to what constitutes a
marriage.' I pray God’s mercy on our
generation that has such a prideful, arrogant
attitude to think that we have the audacity to
define what marriage is about."
This caused a national outcry — some for, and
others against. Citizens held boycotts and kiss-
in protests at local chains, and mayors
threatened to ban the chain from their cities .
(Which mayors can't actually do.)
More controversy arose when Jim Henson Co.
slammed Chick-fil-A for its public stance, and
then Jim Henson toys were prematurely
chicken chain.

8. 3. "Pink Slime" is discovered.
In March, ABC News released a series of
reports raising concern over a hamburger
ingredient dubbed "pink slime,"
a mechanically separated and disinfected beef
product officially known as lean finely textured
beef.
People began petitioning to get
supermarkets, restaurants, and schools to all
stop carrying the slime, even though
various consumer experts said it was safe. This
PR disaster led to massive layoffs. BPI
eventually filed a lawsuit against ABC for $1.2
billion for allegedly making about 200 "false
and misleading and defamatory" statements
about the product.

9. 2. McDonald's #McDStories Twitter campaign
gets out of control.
McDonald's January Twitter campaign asked readers to tweet
their own special #McDStories.
The problem: people used the hastag for horror stories
like:: "Fingernail in my BigMac" and "Hospitalized for food
poisoning after eating McDonalds in 1989. Never ate there
again and became Vegetarian. Should have sued."
McDonald's had no way to control what people tweeted, and
all the stories showed up whenever anyone clicked the
hashtag.
McDonald's social media director Rick Wion emailed BI that:
While #meetthefarmers was used for the majority of the day
and successful in raising awareness of the Supplier Stories
campaign, #mcdstories did not go as planned . We quickly
pulled #mcdstories and it was promoted for less than two
hours.
Within an hour of pulling #McDStories the number of
conversations about it fell off from a peak of 1600 to a few
dozen. It is also important to keep those numbers in
perspective. There were 72,788 mentions of McDonald's
overall that day so the traction of #McDStories was a tiny
percentage (2%) of that.
With all social media campaigns, we include contingency plans
should the conversation not go as planned. The ability to
change midstream helped this small blip from becoming
something larger.

10. 1. Penn State covers up the Sandusky scandal.
Penn State assistant football coach Jerry
Sandusky was charged and later convicted of
repeated counts of child molestation while at
Penn State.
Although the scandal was unveiled in 2011, the
university felt the full fallout in 2012 when the
Freeh report stated that Joe Paterno and the
administration covered up Sandusky’s
abuses, Major companies pulled sponsorhips
of the program. Part of the PR disaster was due
to Penn State's initial difficulty addressing the
problem. Pulitzer-winning stories in The
Patriot-News of Harrisburg initially uncovered
the scandal in March 2011. But Penn State
remained tightlipped. PR firm Ketchum was
hired in November of 2011, and the school
hired Edelman and La Torre for crisis
management in April 2012. The school pledged
to spend $208,000 a month for 12 months on
PR support, but the damage was done.