Cottonelle Social Media Fail

In what appears to be yet another Corporate America social media fail, Cottonelle inappropriately used the viral news that LeBron James is returning to Cleveland to tweet out a message to their followers to use Cottonelle brand toilet paper and flushable wipes.

This is one of those social media “failures” that just goes to show that many large corporations just don’t “get” the use of social media. Most likely, though, the person who tweeted about LeBron James from the Cottonelle Twitter account just doesn’t get social media, either.

Unfortunately, too many major corporations hire agencies to handle their social media accounts. And then those employees at those agencies end up being lower-on-the-totem-pole employees who just don’t have enough corporate public relations type experience to know any better.

There’s rumours that the Cottonelle tweet was in response to Tide’s tweet, which was anticipating the decision by LeBron James:

Tide posted a photo of a LeBron James jersey, with the words “Wash away the last four years”. Well, it looks like they eventually pulled that tweet down: “We can clean the dust off any uniform. #JustInCase http://t.co/vv7TzIza5o—
Tide (@tide) July 10, 2014”.

Frankly, at this point, I’m surprised that Cottonelle still has allowed this horribly inappropriate Tweet to remain in their account, for over three hours now. Let’s top the bleeding now, Cottonelle. Please remove that Tweet!

Soon, this Tweet will go viral, and the public won’t be talking about Cottonelle for the “right” reasons.

H/T goes to Scott Stratten for pointing this out to me. Thanks Scott.

I’ve reached out to Cottonelle for a comment on today’s tweet, but haven’t heard back yet from them. As soon as I hear from them, I’ll update this post.