Some of you that stay tuned to business goings-on within Twitter will remember today for one reason and one reason alone. Today was the day that someone at HMV head office broke ranks and showed us the personality behind the brand.

So often we see a company that is active on Twitter and assume ‘corporate’ without even considering the person sat behind the monitor. Most people will wake up tomorrow and share the living daylights out of the screenshot below that many others, like myself, will have grabbed before they were deleted! However, I will be looking at the whole thing in a different light. Yes, this was a brutal attack on the organisation from within and one that someone (whoever remains that is!) will be being punished for but I would be interested in looking at how much sharing and social engagement this whole episode has actually generated.

Oh the irony…

In my previous blog, I commented on how one of the fundamental reasons HMV failed was due to its lack of engagement and investment in the online space. A mistake its closest competitors capitalised on and ultimately destroyed them with. So how ironic it is that on the day HMV gasped its last breath, they probably generated more interest in their brand in the social space than they have ever done before!

Whereas a few years ago we would read articles that discussed happenings like ‘a mass sacking’ at HMV the next day when the details emerged, what made today so interesting was that whilst we sat with baited breath for the next tweet and the next and so forth, we actually lived out the final moments with the staff at HMV and were given a rare look at the personality and humility of the people that worked there. Most of these people loved their jobs, had done absolutely nothing wrong and were suffering because of bad decision making that the company had made on their behalf. In short, they were failed by the company they loved and, in retaliation, they took their gloves off!

Now, if they had given the person behind the brand the freedom, backing and investment needed to apply that same personality to promoting their Twitter account… perhaps today’s sad and yet incredibly insightful episode may never have occurred and we would have seen that cheeky Jack Russell and gramophone on our high streets for many more years to come..

@hmvtweets

#hmvxfactorfiring tweets