Probably one of the biggest corporate social media fails we covered here at Bored Panda was the time Burger King said that "Women belong in the kitchen." Do you remember? They picked the best time for this phrase, too. The company tweeted it during International Women's Day when everyone was celebrating the social, economic, cultural, and political achievements of women across the globe.
Burger King's tweet caused quite a spectacle—it was described as a misogynistic and outdated remark towards women's role in society.
The company's social media team shortly followed the tweet with an explanation that their aim was to draw attention to the fact that only 20% of professional chefs in the UK are women and that they are under-represented in the culinary industry—they have decided to use International Women’s Day as an opportunity to advertise their culinary scholarship which offers financial assistance to women who work at Burger King and aspire to an academic degree in culinary arts.
But it was already too late. Eventually, the original “controversial” tweet was deleted and Burger King has issued an apology.
There are plenty of ways you can screw up on social media. Nasty comments, rude tweets, a timeline full of misspellings and other faux pas; the possibilities are endless. And they're usually easy enough to fix or delete without it seeming like the end of the world. If you're a regular person.
Not so much for those big business accounts. Of course, corporations are people too—but they're people under constant scrutiny by the jury of the Internet. And that's not necessarily a bad thing.
