Chobani’s Tourette’s gaffe offers cautionary tale
The yogurt maker offends in an attempt to humanize its brand. Three ways for your brand to avoid making a similar mistake.
My buddy Matt Sullivan read an article on Fast Company about how Chobani uses Pinterest, and he thought I might want to check it out. In the article, Chobani’s Digital Communications Manager, Emily Schildt, talked about how fanatical people can be when they engage with Chobani on social media. She said:
“We call it ‘flavor Turettes’ in-house,” she quips. “We get about a tweet per minute, and I would say 50 percent are about our newest flavor, apple cinnamon.”
That really appeared in Fast Company.
I wouldn’t call myself easily offended but I was surprised to see that when speaking on behalf of Chobani, Schildt revealed that the company internally refers to its Facebook page this way. This is something you want to keep in-house—or not do at all.
But it didn’t end there. @Chobani saw that Sullivan sent me the link on Twitter decided to hop in our conversation with the following tweet:
That sound you just heard? That was Chobani falling in the hole it dug for itself.
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