TIL that one fake tweet about a car brand cost them more than their real recall

I was digging through old marketing blogs last night and found a breakdown from 2017 where a single satirical post about a truck catching fire got shared 40k times before anyone fact-checked it. The brand's stock dipped 2% in one afternoon, way worse than the actual recall they issued the month before. Has anyone else seen a rumor outpace the real story like that?

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evan_wilson189d ago

Honestly, that stock dip part reminds me of something my buddy went through with his small BBQ sauce brand. A random food blogger posted a joke about finding a "mystery chunk" in a bottle, and it got picked up by a local news site before anyone even read the label. The post got like 5k shares in a day, way more than any of their actual press releases ever got. He said they spent the whole week putting out fires on Twitter while the real story, which was just a harmless spice clump, got zero attention. Tbh it made him realize people care way more about a wild story than the boring truth, even when the truth is what actually matters.