Oh, KitchenAid, what were you thinking? In the first 2012 Obama-Romney debate, the president mentioned his late grandmother, who could live independently because of Social Security and Medicare. A tweet appeared from @KitchenAidUSA, to #nbcpolitics, reading “Obamas gma even knew it was going 2 b bad! She died 3 days b4 he became president.”

Witless, tasteless, and horribly unwise from a corporate standpoint. The tweet was quickly deleted, and KitchenAid’s senior director of branding, Cynthia Soledad, began twittering frantically.

“Deepest apologies for an irresponsible tweet that is in no way a representation of the brand’s opinion” she posted to #nbcpolitics.”

Next tweet: “I would like to personally apologize to President @BarackObama, his family and everyone on Twitter for the offensive tweet sent earlier.”
Gasp: “It was carelessly sent in error by a member of our Twitter team who, needless to say, won’t be tweeting for us anymore.”

Deep breath: “That said, I take full responsibility for my team. Thank you for hearing me out.”

A later, longer statement in another forum said that the team member in question accidentally posted from the KitchenAid account, thinking they were posting from their personal account. (That could happen to anyone. Anyone witless and tasteless, I mean.)

Some people want that person fired. Some say they won’t be buying KitchenAid again. Others say KitchenAid handled it okay.

Back before appliances tweeted recklessly.

One problem is that while Soledad apologized, and presumably things aren’t going to go well for the employee in question (even if they aren’t fired for, you know, expressing their political views), that person didn’t themselves make any apology that we know of.

Which leads to the bigger problem. Soledad says the tweet “is in no way a representation of the brand’s opinion.” Brands don’t have opinions, and corporations aren’t people. What was KitchenAid thinking? Nothing – brands don’t think.

This is the trouble with spokespeople. Maybe they’re told by a vice-president, “KitchenAid policy is against joking about dead grandmothers.” Next week another vice-president appears and says, “KitchenAid is an edgy brand that holds no grandma sacred and we’re launching a series of hilarious ads about zombie grannies – get the word out!” And just as they’re getting the word out, the CEO sees one of the ads and goes ballistic and KitchenAid gets a whole new policy and probably a whole new spokesperson.

It’s not as if the buck stops there. CEOs come and go, or get new consultants, or even come to appreciate grandparents more with passing time.

So brands don’t really have opinions. (Also peanuts don’t wear top hats, geckos can’t talk, and there are a lot of people in the world more interesting than that guy.) When companies decide it would be good to use social media to publicize their products, that’s just making stuff up. When they hire people to inject personality into their corporate image, they risk getting actual personalities. Which are occasionally delightful, often boring, and occasionally witless and tasteless. But which are not the company.