Category Archives: Luxury Goods

Burger King’s Twitter account was hacked over the President’s Day weekend and those involved switched BK’s logo for McDonald’s and posted false announcements including that the company who tells you to “have it your way” was sold to the Golden Arches.  Chrysler’s Jeep brand’s Twitter account was similarly hacked six days ago in that Cadillac’s logo replaced Jeep’s and erroneous information spread that Jeep was sold to Cadillac.  Moreover, a picture was posted online of a sedan painted with McDonald’s logos and colors, according to an article on Forbes.

In addition to the public relations crisis with Jeep, Chrysler also was subject to a second hacking incident where someone posted a four second video on Chrysler’s “Under the Pentastar” YouTube channel where an image of a Dodge Viper was superimposed onto video footage of the meteor that recently exploded in Russia, according to the same Forbes piece.  Other brands Twitter accounts including Donald Trump, NBC News and the controversial Westboro Baptist Church have fallen prey to similar hacking experiences.

All of these social media blunders makes one wonder who is manning the social media reins when it comes to big brands and their digital advertising platforms.  An informative article in today’s New York Times discusses the issue of security and social media platforms such as Twitter, where a company just as an individual can set up an account for free using a sole user name and password, but access more sophisticated, paid advertising tools.

Twitter earned $288.3 million in advertising revenues alone representing a whopping 90 percent of the company’s revenue, according to the NYT piece.  One would posit that shoring up security for brands would be the number one priority for the company that forced us to make comments in 140 characters or less.

In Twitter’s defense, the company has claimed that it has “manual and automatic controls in place to identify malicious content and fake accounts, but acknowledged that the practice was more art than science,” wrote the author of the NYT piece.  Moreover, Twitter asserted that it sued those responsible for the five most used spamming tools on the site.  That said, social media management companies such as Vancouver-based HootSuite that provide security for brands calls this latest spate of hacking a “huge liability” for big brands, although it can be a financial boon for the corporations that do sell social media security. Twitter did just add a protect that allows advertisers to create and manage ads through third party social media management companies including HootSuite and others.

The bottom line for these social media platforms is that if security isn’t significantly beefed up, and fast, you seriously risk losing profits and your bottom line.  And we wouldn’t be surprised if as this piece is posted, many a bored hacker is trying to figure out which major brand can be coopted and corrupted next.