Some marketer's misuse of social networking is getting them into very hot water, just this year …

Fashion designer company Kenneth Cole's PR department posted a commercial Tweet which made poor taste reference to the 2011 Egyptian protests, during which nearly 1,000 people died. The Tweet read … "Millions are in uproar in #Cairo. Rumour is they heard our new spring collection is now available online at http://bit.ly/KCairo -KC." Even worse, by signing off 'KC' the Tweet appeared to have been written by Kenneth Cole the designer himself, not by some lackey in their in-house PR department. The subsequent KC Tweet apologised for their unintended lack of sensitivity. And I imagine the lackey got fired.

PR agency Redner Group lost its largest client, 2K Games, by Tweeting in response to some unfavourable media reviews for the launch of a new 2K video game that they were "reviewing who gets games (to sample) next time and who doesn't, based on today's venom." The story spread rapidly among the media and caused a furore. 2K promptly issued a statement disassociating themselves from Redner's Tweet, and fired the agency.

An employee of the New Media Strategies agency thought they were logged on to their own private Twitter account and not their client Chrysler's account when they dropped the 'F-Bomb' Tweet referencing a Chrysler ad, which read "I find it ironic that Detroit is known as the #motorcity and yet no-one here knows how to f#!✳#☆# drive." (the expletive substitute characters are mine). The employee was fired and NMS lost the Chrysler account.

So brand-owner companies and their Social Marketing/PR/ad agencies must be extremely careful when posting in the social networking arena of Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, Flickr et al. Once posted, their statement can spread like wildfire with sometimes disastrous consequences - for both the brand owner and their respective agency.