I found the Beyonce and Red Lobster social media fiasco that occurred over super bowl weekend interesting. To quickly recap, Beyonce dropped a new song called "Formation" the day before the super bowl. She mentions a few different products in the lyrics, including Red Lobster. Beyonce fans erupted on Twitter and gave Red Lobster a lot of flack because it did not respond quickly enough to the shoutout. Here are some of my favorite tweets (@Nikki528 is one of my best friends and she's awesome...follow her!):
.@redlobster y'all had a real shout out by Bey and you gonna let Southwest steal your shine? Flops.
@Nikki528 @redlobster Southwest jumped on the hot sauce wagon hours ago. Fire your social media team
@Glamorfonic @redlobster southwest ain't even get the legit shout out but they capitalizing on it!!
@GladiatorInNike I just can't believe @redlobster is flopping so hard! Remember when 7/11 came out, 7-Eleven was QUICK w/it!
@GladiatorInNike @Nikki528 @redlobster the person that runs the account probably works 9-5 mon-fri and ain't checking company emails 
Red Lobster eventually responded later that evening around 11:46 PM ET with the following:
"Cheddar Bey Biscuits" has a nice ring to it, don't you think? #Formation @Beyonce
And the next day:
You try to bake Cheddar Bay Biscuits and tweet at the same time! #harderthanitlooks #Formation
Our bad. We're really busy for some reason. #ThanksB #
After getting up to speed with what the Beyonce and Red Lobster Twitter hype was all about, I knew I had to blog about this for class. Here are some key lessons we can learn from this as it relates to social media:
1) Product placement in music is not a new concept, however you need to be ready to respond appropriately and quickly in your various social media channels to capitalize on the free publicity and avoid any backlash
2) Responses to real-time events are important. If you are a large brand and not following in real time, you could have social media "haters"
3) Responses need to be creative. Red Lobster's responses were not that creative or relevant to the message of the song
4) Have a diverse social media team that keeps close to what's happening in different online communities. A more diverse social media team can help produce relevant social media responses to the audience and customers you serve.
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