The Buzz/Friday#

The Fri-Up: The Fri-Up: Brief Beckham + Kitchen Nightmares’ #crazyamy

Although this week’s Friday# clearly should have been dedicated to David Beckham’s retirement, at the time of going to press, the news had only just been announced. We have however, by virtue of our Brandwatch Twitter component, hastily compiled the most popular Becks tweets just after the story broke in acknowledgement of this sad news.

On the bright side, retirement means more time in your H&M pants, right?

The pre-planned Friday# on Amy’s Baking Company resumes below. 

Last Friday night, arguably the best ever edition of Kitchen Nightmares aired in the US.

The restauranteurs’ entry to the show, they said, was in order to set their somewhat marred social media record straight. To prove that some vicious online trolls against whom they had innocently defended themselves, had jealously attempted to ruin their business with a one star rating.

If you’ve ever seen Kitchen Nightmares, to get Gordon Ramsay in is not usually a bad shout. He has (at least temporarily) turned round the fortunes of many businesses, by lending his magic Michelin starred touch and acute business sense to restaurants. Each happy ending is obligatorily preceded by a first half of the show which makes agonising TV, as the hapless hosts, oblivious to the shortfalls of their restaurant, scream at each other and the customers, while serving beige food.

Although TV generally prompts a massive social media response, in the case of Amy’s Baking company it wasn’t the airing of the programme that caused the reaction and traffic, it was the owners’ unbelievable and relentless responses to comments on their Facebook page.

The history graph below shows the initial spike as the show aired on 11th May (times are in GMT) followed by the backlash that came days later, after the couple started responding to comments on their Facebook page.

Fig 1. History graph to show mentions of Amy’s Baking Company.

Clearly not having seen the final edit of the show, on Friday morning, they proudly promoted the programme on their Facebook page before it aired. The full Facebook rant was too long for us to publish in the Friday#, but Buzzfeed has has posted it here.

And here, for your delight, is just one example: 

Fig 2. Amy’s Baking Company Facebook post 15.04.13.

There is little point in us writing a ten point article on what went wrong or how not to respond to critics on your Facebook page, don’t feed the trolls doesn’t even begin to cover it. Instead watch the second half of Kitchen Nightmares here