Spotlight on Social Sabotage – Hooters Owl Eats Crow

Owl image from Feans

by Kim Niemi

What's the one thing you don't want to do if you find your company has committed an act of social sabotage? Lie about it. 

Why? Someone will catch you and post about it. Like us.

Bad owl. Bad!

​On Saturday, Jezebel called attention to Hooter's Facebook post of an inappropriate image showing "a young woman laughing in pink hot pants. She has a blanket stuck to her shorts that, if you squint real hard and imagine for a few minutes, looks like it could pass for a vagina. The caption below the photo reads "Exhibit A: Proof she was asking for it, your honor." 

Whoa. Here's the photo:

How did it end up on the Hooters Facebook page? 

Obviously somebody put it there. 

Hooters initially tweeted that the page had been “compromised,” following up with a statement on their website claiming the page had been hacked.

But nobody is really buying it. Here are just a few of the comments their tweet generated: 

But what else were they supposed to do? Say, as one commenter put it, “Our intern is an idiot”? 

Yes. If that’s the truth, then yes. Not in exactly those words, but certainly it’s fine to say that someone messed up big time and has been fired, rather than concoct a cover story that isn’t plausible anyway. The odds of a major company like Hooters having their page hacked are slim. It’s more likely that whoever was running the page has a sick sense of humor, and thought it would be funny to post it. 

The ensemble the girl in the photo is wearing is pretty much a Hooters uniform in different colors, which is another reason the post seems intentional. The problem, as it always is, is that the intentions of the person in charge of posting didn’t match up with the intentions of the company at large. 

Hooters does get points for quickly addressing the issue and apologizing, but the hack story seem a little too convenient. If they are that vulnerable to hackers, they need to get to work – or more social sabotage moments could be in their future. If it was a case of bad judgment by a social media intern or other, I imagine they’ll be much more selective in the future. Either way, they had to learn the hard way.

Want to avoid a similar hard lesson? Contact us for a social sabotage audit, so we can help you avoid social sabotage before it happens. 
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