Using Social Media in regards to the food industry is very common these days as people are often tweeting snaps of their dinner or booking tables at restaurants using Facebook. With a fast and easy way to connect with customers, food brands should be embracing social media as much as they can; using it for great customer service, positive brand reputation and community growth.

There are however, some large food brands in which this strategy has not worked at all. Here, I bring you the worst social media disasters for food brands:

Epicurious

Most recently, US food website Epicurious were called out for some hugely insensitive tweets that they sent in the aftermath of the Boston marathon bombings. The company sent tweets to 386,000 followers saying, “Boston our hearts are with you, Here’s a bowl of breakfast energy we could all use to start the day” and “In honour of Boston and New England, may we suggest: whole-grain cranberry scones!”

They were quickly hit by a backlash of users who were horrified by the messages. The company then apologised via Twitter for the tweets, but their insensitivity is likely to have tarnished their brand reputation for a long time to come.

McDonald’s

In January 2012, McDonald’s suffered a social media backlash after trying to start a campaign on Twitter using the promoted hashtag, #McDStories. This hashtag followed on from a more successful hashtag they had used which was #meetthefarmers. McDonald’s had intended the second hashtag to enable lovers of the fast food chain to share their stories of visits with those behind the scene; however things quickly took a turn for the worse.

The hashtag was used to bombard the company with tweets about everything people disliked about the restaurant, including horrific stories they had of previous meals there. The hashtag is still used to this day and they have recently revealed a new hashtag for their Premium McWrap using the hashtag #UnwrapWhatsFresh - it too has resulted in some hijacking.

Skittles

Someone in the marketing department at Mars decided that it would be good idea to run a campaign that let Twitter users take over the Skittles homepage and turn it into a big skittles party; using all tweets that had the word “skittles” in them. Things soon went bad however when people realised that no one was filtering what was shown on the website and hundreds of hugely offensive tweets were being used in the page.

Tweets included, “Eating more than eight purple Skittles in one sitting can lead to cancer,” and “My little brother choked to death on a skittle exactly two years ago today,” plus many more things that I wouldn’t like to repeat.

Snickers

A series of Tweets from celebrities including Katie Price and Rio Ferdinand confused Twitter a while back when Rio started tweeting about knitting and Katie about the Eurozone. When they eventually tweeted saying “You’re not you when you’re hungry @snickersUK #hungry#spon”, it was revealed that they had been paid by Snickers to send these tweets and thus advertise Snickers.

The campaign raised the question of legality surrounding the subject of celebrities, as after complaints, the campaign was investigated by the ASA as users complained that it wasn’t obvious that the tweets were advertisements, but it was cleared.

Burger King

In February 2013 Burger King’s official Twitter account was hacked and its name and logo changed to that of McDonald’s. The account then started promoting McDonald’s products with an initial tweet saying, “Burger King USA official Twitter account. Just got sold to McDonald’s because the whopper flopped.”

Photos of dirty kitchens were tweeted and the background picture was changed to show McDonald’s products.

It was eventually reported that hacktivist group, Anonymous, were responsible and the account was suspended while Burger King tried to regain control.

Food brands seem to get easily caught in social media disasters and a lot of the time they tend to drop themselves in it. Which food brand social media disaster stands out most in your mind?