I would like to begin my analysis of the “Twin
Towers Mattress Sale” by directly quoting CNN
when they said, “9/11 is NOT a holiday. You can't have 9/11 sales.” I want to
make this clear from the very beginning, I do not think it is appropriate for
any company, large or small to have a sale based on a devastating personal,
national or world event. We do not remember the attack on Pearl Harbor by
having a swimsuit sale for many reasons, but simply said these things are just NOT
appropriate. With that being said, Miracle Mattress of San Antonio clearly made
a massive mistake in releasing a video promoting a “Twin Towers Sale” on their
Facebook page. They immediately received backlash from people and there are stories
on just about every news
station explaining this awful situation. For my personal analysis I would like
to focus on the outcomes for Miracle Mattress and compare it to a situation I found
while researching this topic. Unknown to most of us, on September 11, 2016 in the
local Panama City Beach Walmart, a display was created out of Coke products depicting
the Twin Towers and an American Flag. The towers were actually formed from Coke
Zero cans, as to make a connection to ground zero. The full article can be
found here,
but I was in complete shock this had not made larger news. There was immediate
backlash from customers and the display was quickly taken down, but I could
only find one source that had reported this incident. Yes, this situation was
probably far less severe of an offense than the video produced by Miracle
Mattress, but I think it was too quickly swept under the rug. Walmart issued a
statement saying, “They didn’t mean any harm,” and they continued on to blame
the creative for this depiction on Coke. Coke did not make any statements in
response. I recognize Coke and Walmart are much larger corporations, but it was
very apparent to me they clearly are held to a different standard.
The response to this video was
devastating to Miracle Mattress as the owner did all he could in his power to
save face for his company. He released a statement
apologizing for the video clip, claiming they would simply stay quite
throughout the rest of 9/11 and make an additional statement in the week to
come. Unfortunately, just because Miracle Mattress stayed quite, it did not
mean social media and the public did. The
hashtag #MiracleMattress began trending and still shows evidence of the harassment
towards this organization. One thing which seems very strange to me was the
woman who is the main spokes person in the video, and the owner, share the same
last name. I am not positive on their relationship, but I would assume there is
a high chance they are actually husband and wife. If this is the case, why is
this the first time the owner is hearing of this marketing campaign as he
claims? I understand the owner of this company and the other executives did not
know exactly how to respond in a situation like this, but I do not believe remaining
silent for as many days as they did, was for the best. However, they did
release another statement,
nine days after their original statement expressing how Miracle Mattress
executives had decided to handle this situation. They came to the conclusion they
would be “indefinitely
closing their doors.” I do feel this was an appropriate approach, but what
a devastating decision. I also found the letter to be written, much less professionally than I would have expected. I felt it was missing several key components we had discussed in class. To be specific the owner used many contractions and a few other grammatical mistakes. I am sure his focus was not on his punctuation or grammar at a time like this, but I did find this interesting. I also did found some evidence of the store reopening its doors
more recently, but I was not able to find as much affirmative information on
this.
With the decision to close their
doors, I do not feel this company has a chance to regain success even if they
do reopen. I went to their Facebook page to see what others had been saying
directly to the organization and found they were ranked a 1.2-Star company. I work
in social media marketing and I know first hand a ranking like this is very
hard to recover from. I scrolled through hundreds, maybe even thousands of reviews
left on this organization’s page. There were a few who claimed there should be
mercy shown to Miracle Mattress, but most were of complete contempt.
I am torn on how exactly I feel about
this situation. I believe Miracle Mattress was completely wrong in their
release of this video, and really they were wrong for ever scheming up such a
horrific marketing plan. This being said, it is so sad to see how this store
and franchise has been completely diminished to nothing. They have lost
basically all credibility and respect in the national view. They have been
publicly shamed to the point of no return. After a situation like this I do not feel Miracle
Mattress will ever be able to make a full recovery and return to be a profitable
organization. Social media can be a beautiful thing as it brings the world
together and allows us to share information in an instance. However, for the
Miracle Mattress store in San Antonio, they saw a much uglier side to the power
of social media.
