Kudos To The Crock-Pot People For Handling The Online Fallout From 'This Is Us' So Well

from the what-a-crock dept

Corporate Twitter accounts typically range from the blandly uninspired to exhibiting unfortunate behavior. While you can occasionally get some good content out of these handles, they are far too often just...meh.

And, yet, let's see how the Crock-Pot brand of slow-cookers responded to a genuine freak-out on the internet that occurred after a recent episode of This Is Us. For those of you who watch the show, here's your insipid little spoiler alert. A main character on the show died in a recent episode when a slow cooker malfunctioned and burned the house down. Cool. Well, apparently that's when many viewers took to Twitter to announce that they were going to get these death machines out of their houses ASAP, with many mentioning Crock-Pots by name, even though there was no branding on the murderous slow-cooker in the show.

Fans freaked out, taking to social media with tales (and gifs) of throwing away their Crock-Pots. The Crock-Pot Brand people leapt into action, quickly creating a Twitter account (@CrockPotCares) to deal with the public relations problem that had been dropped in their lap like a delicious and family-pleasing but nevertheless painful batch of hot soup.

And they did a darn good job of handling all of this on Twitter. I'm conditioned at this point to expect for companies in these instances to mirror the online freak-out themselves, going crazy about what could be viewed as an unintentional attack on its their brand. Honestly, you half expect lawsuits to be drawn up almost immediately. Crock-Pot instead began educating the internet about the safety of its products while also drawing real connections with the viewers of the show so that it comes off as non-defensive.

It didn't end there. Apparently Crock-Pot even got the actor (hey, it's that guy from Heroes!) who plays the character who died to get in on the fun.

That's about as well as I can imagine a company handling all of this. There is also a ton more in the tweet history that shows how creative and hip whoever is managing the account has been. It would be entirely understandable for the Crock-Pot folks to be angry, irritated, or terrified of this online response to a television show. They could have easily lashed out at the show, or even at an American public who apparently has trouble telling the difference between reality and fiction. Instead, they chose to be cool and human and came off as both confident and friendly.

That's a good look all around.

Filed Under: crock pot, culture, this is us, tweets
Companies: crock-pot