That’s not the way they wanted to celebrate reaching one million followers.
The history of Twitter is littered with examples of sports teams who have committed pretty high-profile social media mistakes and the New England Patriots joined the list of infamy last night.
Tom Brady’s New England Patriots celebrated reaching one million followers last night and marked the occasion by asking fans to RT the tweet below, which would then create a digital version of the Pats jersey with the user’s Twitter handle appearing above the number one on the back of the jersey on the Patriots’ Twitter feed.
We're saying thanks to @patriots' 1million followers w/ custom digital Pats jerseys – RT for yours! #1MillionPatriots pic.twitter.com/u2SfidCb9e
— New England Patriots (@Patriots) November 13, 2014
Unfortunately for the Pats, whoever was operating the account took their eye off the ball and retweeted the below tweet from the franchise’s official account to their one million plus followers. You’ll spot what’s wrong pretty quickly.
Last minute entry for worst tweet of 2014 pic.twitter.com/7IcLXC5XUY
— Seth Fiegerman (@sfiegerman) November 14, 2014
The Pats subsequently apologised for the rather embarrassing error but not before screengrabs of the offending tweet had hit the internet; let’s just say they’ll be a lot more careful if they try out a similar exercise in future.
We apologize for the regrettable tweet that went out from our account. Our filtering system failed & we will be more vigilant in the future.
— New England Patriots (@Patriots) November 14, 2014
This was the scene in the Patriots’ social media department last night…
Hat-tip: Buzzfeed
