Today, Major League Baseball teams, in support of GLAAD Spirit Day, changed the avatars of the Facebook and Twitter pages with many posting messages of support for day’s goal of raising awareness to help reduce bullying of LGBT youth. The hashtag of #spiritday was also utilized.
Frames of avatars were the color purple.
As you can imagine, responses from numerous fan bases were, well, not so positive.
A brand can have the best and well thought out intent with any type of crowd sourcing or promotion of an initiative. But it is critical to think of one thing with any posting, and that is “what’s the worst response that we could get, and will that response overshadow the intent of this messaging?”
A prime example was McDonald’s #MCDStories, which did not end well
In this case, the responses probably overshadowed the intent of MLB teams. This should not discourage anyone from postings that will generate a large amount of response, but the key is to bear in mind the worst possible backlash that could come.
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