Here's a rare inside peek into a brand caught in the middle of a Twitter crisis of its own making. The brand: the video game publisher EA.
Late last week, they tried to piggyback on a Twitter meme where people tweet “He/she is perfect but” and then usually a character flaw is inserted. Some examples:
So EA tweeted:
Perhaps they meant it to say ‘This person's cool, but I can't play in the same game as them.' Perhaps. But most gamers on Twitter took it as ‘Single player games are trash.'
And while it's true that EA is known for its multiplayer games, it also has a whole lot of single player games of its own. Not only EA-specific games, but also dozens of games from other developers of which it's the distributor.
The Shitstorm Starts
But never mind. Out the tweet went, and within an hour, EA's internal Slack was buzzing.
Employees starting posting some of the tweet's replies, like “shoulda kept this in the drafts”, and one popular YouTuber tweeting:
Rather than post a mea culpa and be done with it, EA — let's just say not known for its absence of arrogance — decided to double-down and recruit its sibling studios into the effort.
Quoting ForTheWin.com:
There was a call to action in the Slack channel, featuring a plan where EA studios would publicly ridicule their publisher online. “Social managers, I need all hands on deck. We are actually going to pitch the ‘roasting EA' strategy. If you’re around please add what you might feel comfortable replying in [sic] your respective accounts.”
The idea with the roasting was to get more attention on the tweet, then use it to highlight some of EA’s single-player games. They wanted to flip the narrative and turn it into a marketing win.
Multiple social media managers for other studios opted out straight away, including those who handle BioWare’s major series: Mass Effect and Dragon Age…. With a lack of solidarity, the plan fell apart.
When the Chefs Aren't in the Kitchen
You may wonder how a tweet like that isn't prepped in advance and signed off on by at least a couple of the sub-brands, or at least reviewed by a manager.
The reason, according to ForTheWin, is that the main EA Twitter account isn't even owned by the social media teams at EA. It's not under the Branding people, and it's not under the Communications people. In fact, it's reported by a source that EA's own social media director doesn't have any say in, or access to, the EA Twitter account.
Eventually, the CMO stepped in and told the team to own the mistake.
And so, by the end of the day, the account anemically tweeted:
Good one! (cough)
