The saying goes, “In life, there are no mistakes, only lessons.” One thing to keep in mind in the digital age is that even the most prestigious brands are susceptible to slip-ups. It’s our job to take a proactive approach to industry crisis, and learn lessons from big name brands in the process. Join us this week as we look at lessons from Target, Bank of America and Oreo. 
Memo to Target Managers: Hispanics Don’t All Wear Sombreros
BusinessWeek
Target used a training document at one of its warehouses to explain to managers that not all Hispanic employees eat tacos and burritos, dance to salsa or wear sombreros. “The content of the document referenced is not representative of who Target is,” spokesman Molly Snyder said. The organization is learning the hard way not to flirt with the chance of racial slurs, as three employees seek unspecified punitive damages for harassment, failure to prevent harassment, age and race discrimination and retaliation. How will Target redeem their weakened reputation?
Bank of America’s Epic Twitter Fail
Digiday
We all know that feeling, the one where a verified Twitter account responds to our poor service complaints and offers us free coupons. Best day ever, right? We feel as though the engagement aspect of social media is working in our favor and that our favorite restaurants and teams have a personal identity. Unfortunately, not all Twitter accounts have human oversight, as recently demonstrated when generic programmed responses went haywire to Bank of America’s followers.
4 Steps to Explosive Real-Time Marketing
Mashable
Now that we’ve inspected two big brand blunders, let’s examine a brand that did it right and the lessons learned from their practices. When the power went out at the Mercedes-Benz Superdome during the third quarter of the Super Bowl, many people tweeted their suspicions on what caused the outage, but in all the blackout noise,Oreo had the best response by far. Since then Oreo has become known for its real-time marketing and its excellent performance injecting their brand in relevant, timely conversations on a continuous basis. How can you apply their actions to your own brand?
At WordWrite we believe the desire to learn should never cease in the communications industry. Whether it’s adapting after a huge crisis or employing an excellent strategy, it’s important to learn from the best. Enjoy your weekend and we’ll see you next week with another Wrap! Ask us questions and share your thoughts below.
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Kaitlin Roth is an intern for WordWrite Communications.
