Digital Signage and Social Networks – Avoid the PR Disaster
We are often asked about using Digital Signage to display social media feeds like Facebook and Twitter. This can be a great way to encourage interaction between your audience and your signage. But is it the best way?
One of the biggest caveats in displaying social media this way is monitoring the content of the posted messages. As long as there is a public forum for voices to be heard (or read), there will be individuals who will make use of it for their own purposes and agendas. And while digital signage is all about communication with as many people as possible, it is important for it to be the type of communication that represents your brand and values.
Having live feeds from social media sites is a potential way for your brand’s reputation to be open for attack and even litigation.
Consider what happened to one of Canada’s top TV outlets, as reported by cbssports.com:
“During their coverage of the NHL trade deadline on Monday, Canadian sports network TSN was featuring a running stream of viewer Tweets that took an ugly turn early in the day.
And now they have a legal fight on their hands because of it.
Toronto Maple Leafs teammates Joffrey Lupul and Dion Phaneuf, as well as Phaneuf’s wife, actress Elisha Cuthbert, have hired a legal team and are seeking an apology from the network as well as damages after TSN allowed an inappropriate Tweet to appear on the broadcast that suggested there was some sort of affair between Lupul and Cuthbert.
On Tuesday, the Vancouver based law firm of Gall Legge Grant & Munroe issued the following statement on behalf of Lupul, Phaneuf and Cuthbert.
“On behalf of our clients Dion Phaneuf, his wife Elisha Cuthbert and Joffrey Lupul, we have sent a letter to TSN demanding that TSN issue a formal apology and pay a significant amount of damages to each of our clients for broadcasting a false and defamatory tweet during their trade deadline show yesterday. We are sending a similar letter to the author of the tweet, Mr. Anthony Adragna……”
“It is bad enough that there are people who spend their time using social media to publish such false and malicious stories, but it is made much worse when a reputable media outlet like TSN gives broad circulation and credibility to these false stories by republishing them as TSN did.””
This incident brought embarrassment, not only to the innocent parties involved, but also to the company that allowed the tweet to be published. As a side note, TSN’s parent company, Bell, is a majority owner of the Maple Leafs, making the situation even more awkward.
While most situations such as this are rare, it does highlight the potential risk of using live feeds to engage with your audience. And since most digital signage is engineered to be automated when it comes to displaying social media feeds, the damage could be done before anyone is aware of it happening.
In conclusion, it is best to make your interactions with your audience through well designed and produced content that can engage on its own merits, and if you must use social media, beware of what posts you may be held accountable for before they make it onto the display.
