When top executives goof up on social media

Impact of social media in our daily lives has largely been good. But it can sometimes be incredibly dangerous and embarrassing, too

Social media has changed the habits, expectations, and lifestyles of billions of people around the world. Popular social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn have led to tremendous social, political, and personal changes over the past few years. 

The impact of the presence of social media in our daily lives has largely been good. But it can sometimes be incredibly dangerous and embarrassing, too. Something of that nature was experienced on March 29 this year by Tom Greeco, the chief executive of Frito Lay.

According to a medium.com report, Greeco thought Twitter was Google and kicked off a laugh riot with a series of hilarious and silly tweets.

When the CEO of a potato-chip company tweets “How to be a chips company CEO?” one wonders which chips he is talking about. Maybe Intel can answer that.

Greeco, it seemed, needed an Oxford dictionary when he sought to know “Does savory mean salty?”

The next tweet was a chemistry question. “How much sodium is ok?.” Oh wait, here comes the counter question. “How much sodium is not ok?.” Maybe he likes sodium a lot.

And, then he asks “What’s the lowest you can pay a potato farmer?” Well, we can say that it’s very cheap of the ‘chip’ maker to still be checking that. 

The tweets like “Has any CEO used the ‘lay it on me’ pun yet?”, “Buy chips on iPhone”, “Translate into French: lays chips”, “Is ‘les chip’ the same as ‘lays chip’ for France?” seem to suggest the man was in a different world altogether.

And then he asks “Who is tweeting my google searches?” and “Who’s watching me?”

But, Greeco is not the first prominent executive to make a mistake on his personal social media account. Here’s a list of executives who did that before.

In November 2014, Twitter CFO Anthony Noto, no stranger to social media mishaps, accidentally publicly tweeted what was intended to be a private direct message – twice. Noto referred to a potential acquisition: “I still think we should buy them. He is on your schedule for Dec 15 or 16 — we will need to sell him. I have a plan.” Then, two days later, another unusual message was published, suggesting yet another mistake.

Gene Morphis, former CFO of Francesca’s Holdings Corp, lost his job after making Facebook and Twitter posts that improperly disclosed confidential financial information, in violation of the company policy, corporatecomplianceinsight.com reported.

Reed Hastings, CEO of Netflix, who inadvertently violated the SEC’s Regulation Fair Disclosure after announcing on his personal Facebook account that Netflix viewing “exceeding 1 billion hours [of video] for the first time ever.” 

Similarly, Justine Sacco, a former IAC PR executive, made an offensive racist tweet correlating AIDS to race. That tweet cost her dear; she lost her job.

Greg Gopman, former CEO of hackathon organiser AngelHack, felt the impact of a social media post gone wrong when he received widespread backlash after a highly insensitive Facebook post attacking the homeless and poor population of San Francisco.

In another unusual tweet, Economist Nouriel Roubini revealed his colourful side to the world in December last year. When the man, known to predict economic doom and gloom, suddenly looked keen to mingle with “hotties” on Twitter and asked “know any hotties free for dinner or drinks”, it came as a surprise to many.