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Have we heard this story before? Executive from very large multinational posts a blog under an assumed name to attack the company's enemies or defend some outrageous practice. Eventually the executive gets nailed and PR scrambles to clean up the mess.
This time the Stupid Use of the Web Award goes to Burger King Vice President Stephen Grover.
Using his middle daughter's screen name, Grover posted snarky comments to various public web sites about a farmworkers' group battling the fast-food giant over wages for tomato pickers.
His web posts included a description of the coalition as "an attack organization lining the leaders (sic) pockets ... They make up issues and collect money from dupes that believe their story. To (sic) bad the people protesting don't have a clue regarding the facts. A bunch of fools!"Has no one learned that controversial anonymous blog postings will come back to haunt you?
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| A woman uses a puppet of the Burger King mascot during a protest against low wages in Miami last year. |
Last week, Burger King fired two employees connected to the blogosphere debacle, The Associated Press reported.
The company has declined to name the executives who were dismissed, but Miami news reports indicate that one of them is Grover.“Following an investigation, Burger King Corporation has terminated two employees who participated in unauthorized activity on public Web sites which did not reflect the company’s views and which were in violation of company policy,” Burger King said in a statement.
Last year, a similar snafu erupted when Whole Foods CEO John Mackey was outed for using a fake screen name to post on Yahoo Finance stock forums. A lawsuit later revealed the secret identity, which caused some embarrassing press coverage.
The Whole Foods controversy pales beside the soap opera unfolding at Burger King, a company determined to wrestle the Nastiest Company of the Year award from Wal-Mart.
The fast food giant also made the brilliant move of hiring a private investigative company with the warm and fuzzy name Diplomatic Tactical Services. The head of the company then posed as a student to infiltrate the tomato pickers group.
Of course Burger King has now fired the investigative agency, saying---get this!--that it violated the company's code of ethics.
Go figure.
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It doesn't, Colin. Here are four reasons why:
1. This story has yet to gain traction. People are talking about it, and...
Comments (3)
Since apparently no one from Wal-Mart has been outed for using fake screen names in the blogosphere, what's the point of the headline and reference to "nastiest" company?
Posted by Larry White | May 28, 2008 3:12 PM
Posted on May 28, 2008 15:12
I think the better way to phrase that might be, what Burger King has DEvolved into. Not only do they have dismal PR and a creepy costumed character, climatecounts.org gave the company zero out of 100 points on its actions to help prevent climate change.
Zero.
Compare this to Starbucks, who earned 49 points.
Posted by JohnO | May 23, 2008 5:52 PM
Posted on May 23, 2008 17:52
This isn't on topic at all, but it must be said. Is anybody else totally creeped out by what the Burger King guy has evolved into? If I were a little kid, that guy would scare me. What am I saying, he scares me now! I saw some BK ad the other day that was supposed to be somehow futuristic, and he had morphed into something from a nightmare I hope I never have--kind of a metallic, vaguely pedophilic un-human. My husband said he saw one where the "king" had ballooned into a giant and was staring into somebody's bedroom or something. OMG! Just thinking about it makes me shiver.
So do you think that whoever is doing their advertising is also doing their PR? Or that the "king" himself--no, ITself is loose in the blogosphere? Maybe that could explain it!
Posted by Joan H. | May 21, 2008 7:47 PM
Posted on May 21, 2008 19:47