IBM was in the hot seat this week after #HackAHairDryer, their campaign to encourage more women to get involved in STEM fields (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics) backfired on social media.

In what The Verge called one of the worst PR efforts in recent memory, IBM encouraged women to post ideas about how they would hack the humble hair dryer. It was all over in barely 48 hours: the backlash on Twitter resulted in the campaign being pulled completely and IBM posting an apology. Using the Visibrain Twitter monitoring platform, we looked back at the 18,581 tweets posted between December 7th and December 8th to see what happened on Twitter and how IBM handled the crisis.

The Volkswagen #DieselGate scandal rocked the world in September this year as one of the worst crises the automotive industry has ever seen. The event was massively covered by mainstream media and social media alike.

Visibrain’s very own Georgina Parsons was invited by Philippe Borremans, creator of the Wag the Dog PR podcast, to take part in a discussion around how the crisis unfurled, both on Twitter and across other channels.

The Visibrain blog regularly publishes case studies about brand crisis situations on social media, and November has left us spoilt for choice. It’s no secret that Twitter is pretty merciless with companies who slip up: it’s the preferred medium for spreading information at record speed, true or not.

Here are our top five cases of brands that were hot topics on Twitter last month for all the wrong reasons.

It’s a time of year for giving, so for the run up to Christmas, we’re putting Twitter data under the tree. From Monday November 30th to Friday December 11th, Visibrain will be launching the #XmasData hashtag, which will allow you to ask us for the top 3 Twitter influencers for any topic!

Since the beginning of November, Starbucks has taken over social media with the return of their seasonal festive cups. #RedCups was met with excitement from the brand’s fans, but the campaign has run into some trouble along the way, after certain customers expressed outrage at this year’s minimalist red design. But how much impact has the controversy truly had on Twitter, and has it cast a shadow over Starbucks’ festive campaign?

To find out, we collected all of the hashtags that have been created around the Starbucks Red Cups theme. We analyzed all relevant tweets using the Visibrain Twitter monitoring platform to try and find out which aspects of the campaign stand out the most so far: festive spirit or controversy?