Published in Crisis

This weekend, American restaurant chain Red Lobster was presented with the kind of publicity opportunity that marketers dream of. Just before her halftime performance at the Super Bowl, pop superstar Beyoncé released her new single Formation, whose lyrics mention Red Lobster restaurants. Fans waited expectantly for the brand to respond to the mention on Twitter…and waited, and waited.

It took Red Lobster a full eight hours to respond to the 275,963 tweets generated by the endorsement, and Twitter was not impressed. We used Visibrain to find out what users had to say and to show why timing is so crucial in social media, especially where Twitter is concerned.

Published in Trends

Last week, toy manufacturer Mattel announced that they were making major changes to the iconic Barbie doll. New versions of the dolls that allow for more diversity will soon be available for purchase. Featuring different body types, skin colors and hair textures, it’s a big step forward from the classic blond, slim Barbie we all know.

Fans were overjoyed at the changes, and the announcement was massively covered by the media, social and otherwise. We used the Visibrain platform to look at Twitter data around the announcement, to find out just how much of a PR success Barbie’s makeover really was.

Published in Crisis

Microsoft’s partnership with the NFL (National Football League) has been a pretty rough road so far, and Sunday’s AFC championship game between the New England Patriots and Denver Broncos didn’t help. The Patriots were using Microsoft Surface tablets to monitor the match…only to have them stop working at a crucial moment in the game.

It turned out that the glitch wasn’t actually Microsoft’s fault, but that didn’t stop Twitter from having a field day. We used the Visibrain Twitter monitoring platform to analyze the 21,942 tweets that were posted during and after the game, to find out how Microsoft handled the crisis.