Behind KLM Airlines' Big Real-Time Social Media Fail

KLM Airlines has built a reputation among airlines as a center of excellence for social media strategy, but in its latest attempt at real-time social media marketing, the airline managed to offend a significant chunk of the world's social media population. After Sunday's disastrous Tweet following the Mexico/Netherlands World Cup match -- in which it paired ‘adios amigos' with an illustration of a Mexican man with cartoonish sombrero, mustache and poncho in a Departures sign -- we reached out to KLM's for comment on what it learned. We learned that KLM definitely knows it did something wrong, and it promises not to do it again, but it's just not sure what it was.

See how KLM performs on SkiftIQ

"We had very emotional replies," a spokesperson for KLM who spoke to Skift about the incident state, sticking to the script of their official apology. "We apologized to those we have offended." The official statement from the airline in its entirety, published on their news site is as follows: "We realize that our posts on Twitter and Facebook following the match triggered many emotional replies. We emphasize that it was ne