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On September 9, 2012, the Kansas City Chiefs lost to the Atlanta Falcons by a score of 40 to 24. The next evening, Travis was chatting with his buddy since fifth grade, Bryan, and they were complaining about how the Chiefs were approximately $30 million under the salary cap for the fifth year in a row.

Travis said, “You mean to tell me the Kansas City Chiefs have been approximately $100–$130 million dollars under the salary cap in the last five years? OMG, I'm sooo tweeting that.”

So he sent this one tweet: “I'm not much of a @KCChiefs fan anymore. Clark Hunt's yearly [$]30m under the [salary] cap is bullshit. Greedy bastard owners can F.O. cc @nfl”1

Figure P.1 “The Tweet Heard ’Round the World”

This was not a friendly tweet, Travis understands that. He was angry, as a fan, and decided to tweet about it. It was one glorious tweet from one gloriously disgruntled fan. It was only one rude tweet, not a barrage of tweets.

As you'll soon find out from this book, both Travis and Chris tackle the consequential and inconsequential, in life and in business, with strong opinions and tremendous fervor, with a balance of hilarity and humility, that comes from an insatiable thirst for continued learning and teaching.

After Travis complained about the salary cap on Twitter, he was over it. He sent that one tweet and went on his merry way. It wasn't until the next day at lunch that he looked through his Twitter direct messages. It was only then that he noticed the tweet from the Chiefs. He nearly choked on his delicious Chipotle burrito! Travis thought about it for a few minutes, and then took a screencap of the direct message, as shown in Figure P.2. It said, “Would help if you had your facts straight. Your choice to be a fan. cc get a clue.”

Figure P.2 The Tweet Response with No Digital Sense

The Chiefs had sent this tweet just three minutes after Travis sent his rude, disgruntled tweet. Somebody from the Chiefs' social media team immediately tweeted to Travis, while in an emotional state, from the Chiefs' official Twitter handle, @kcchiefs. Note: the Chiefs switched their official Twitter handle to @chiefs in 2016.

The Chiefs' social media manager didn't seem to have much “digital sense.” That person clearly gave zero f's at that time. It was not a good common sense approach to attack Travis. In fact, Travis wasn't even that angry. He was just sending out a bit of a rant regarding his displeasure with how the Chiefs were being cheap and spending significantly less than the salary cap.

Jay Baer recently published a great book on this subject called Hug Your Haters.2 The Chiefs' social media team should have tried to defuse the situation, not fuel the flame. The first indicator that it would be wise to hug their hater was that at the time, Travis's account had more Twitter followers than the Chiefs'.

Digital Bit: This is one reason why organizations should have a social media governance policy in place for how to respond (or prioritize) tweets such as his.

(Look for more Digital Bits, free templates, and resource downloads throughout the book.)

After seeing the emotionally charged response to his tweet, Travis did what any social media savvy person would do, who has just had a crummy customer experience; he took the screencap of the Chief's' message and tweeted it out to his followers.

This is where the social s#%t-storm started.

Digital Bit: If you send a private message via Twitter or Snapchat, it's not necessarily private. Anyone can screenshot anything.

Travis replied to the private, direct message by sending out this tweet: “It's good to know the @kcchiefs social media is ran [sic] by immature teenagers. Fact. Hunt hoards salary cap $$$. #KC” (Figure P.3).

Figure P.3

Whoever responded to Travis's tweet from the Chiefs' Twitter handle lacked both common sense and digital sense. He made a hasty assumption that it was appropriate to defend the Chiefs in private via direct message, indicating the absence of a social media governance policy. He lacked or ignored any protocol that would enable him to respond in real-time, proactively, to Travis' public complaint in a way that allowed for a productive dialogue. He also failed to acknowledge that in a world of noise, Travis's initial tweet was far less damaging to the Chiefs' image than was the tweet storm that followed.

Look at the data: the first tweet had 15 retweets; the follow-up had more than 3,200!

The Chiefs' staffer didn't have, or ignored, any protocol that would enable responding in real time to this public fan rant in a way that could allow for a proactive dialogue. They also forgot that in a world of noise, his initial tweet was far less damaging than the tweet storm that followed. They had no social media governance policy in place to make a decision as to whether to respond at all, and it had big consequences.

What did the social media manager have to gain by being rude back to a rude fan? Nothing except the brief satisfaction of telling someone off. You can do that, all day long, on a personal account. However, if you do that on a corporate branded account, get ready for some backlash.

Keep in mind, in the beginning, Travis was just complaining. People bitch about their sports teams ALL. THE. TIME. This was nothing out of the ordinary. Immediately after Travis publicly replied to the Chiefs' tweet, all hell broke loose. He received a bunch of responses (Figure P.4).

“TW, did the Chiefs actually send you that?” – name removed

“Are you serious, bro? The Chiefs said that?” – name removed

Figure P.4 This Is One of the First Recorded Selfies by Travis Wright in 2012

Tweets started flying back and forth asking him questions about the situation. Many of them had the @KCChiefs twitter handle included. Even some local Kansas City sportscasters started asking him, “Hey @teedubya, is this real? Did the Chiefs really tweet that to you?” The response: yes. And then the Chiefs blocked @teedubya on Twitter.

When they blocked Travis, he could no longer see their public tweets, and any private tweets they had between them disappeared. Now that made him angry.

DIGITAL BIT: You don't want to add fuel to the fire on social media without a clear understanding of the unintended consequences that may ensue. Try to de-escalate or do nothing at all.

After being blocked from his beloved team on Twitter, Travis decided to teach them a lesson for their lack of digital sense. The first thing that Travis did was go to Reddit.com, and to the NFL subreddit, Reddit.com/r/nfl, and he posted his rant.

@KCChiefs Twitter Account, tells fan (Me) to Get a Clue and stop being a fan. Submitted September 11, 2012 * by teedubya

“The KC Chiefs just blocked me on Twitter @teedubya. Last night, I tweeted that for the 4th year in a row, the Chiefs are at the bottom of salary cap spending and that the owner, Clark Hunt, is hoarding cap dollars. The Chiefs commitment to mediocrity has made me not care much about being a fan…

1. My first tweet to them (see Figure P.2).

2. They responded with this DM (see Figure P.3).

3. I responded that it is good to know that the KC Chiefs have an immature teenager running their social media.

4. Then they blocked my account.

I, as a fan for my whole life of nearly 40 years, who has never seen the Chiefs in a Superbowl; nor have I seen a playoff win in nearly 20 years; nor have I seen a QB drafted [EDIT: in the first round] in the last 27 years. Chiefs fans have a right to be pissed.

The Kansas City Chiefs have no right to be pissy toward the fans. We are the ones paying for their salaries. Shame on you, Chiefs. Oh, and congrats on 50 years of being in KC. 10 years of greatness, followed by 40 years of pathetic profiteering. Clark Hunt sits in Dallas siphoning Kansas City dollars.”

Keep in mind the customer's (fan) perspective as context for this situation. The Chiefs had not drafted a quarterback since 1983, and it was 2012! The Chiefs hadn't won a playoff game since 1993. They were in the middle of a nearly 20-year playoff-win-drought. The Chiefs lost seven playoff games in a row, and they were spending millions below the salary cap.

Early in the 2012 season, when Travis sent the tweet, the announced amount under the cap was $26.6 million; it was later adjusted to $16.1 million. In 2011, when there was no salary cap or salary floor, the Chiefs spent the least in player salaries. Beginning in 2013, teams had to spend at least 89 percent of the cap or be subject to penalties.3,4

The NFL football is serious business to paying fans in America. And being under the salary cap for multiple years in a row had angered many Kansas City Chiefs fans.

The rant made the front page of Reddit. Some readers were mad at the Chiefs. Some were mad at Travis, calling him many different colorful terms. The story began to go viral because of this activity.

Once it made the front page of Reddit, the social media shit-storm gained strength and started being referenced on big news sites and the local media.

One local disc jockey in Kansas City named Lazlo started going off about the situation on his broadcast that day.

Lazlo has a show called The Church of Lazlo in the afternoon in the Kansas City market. He was yelling about how people behind their computer screens are keyboard warriors. How weak and ridiculous they are! Lazlo (on air) said, (paraphrasing)

“The Internet trolls would never talk like that in public, like they do on the Internet! That ASSCLOWN on Reddit, who was talking about the Kansas City Chiefs rude tweet today, Oh! they told him to get a clue? Boo hoo! Big freaking deal!”

One of TW's buddies called him up and said, “Hey Travis, Lazlo's talking about you and your Reddit post and the Chiefs deal. You should call into the station and chat with him.”

So, Travis did. He couldn't get through the phone line, so he sent a text to the Church of Lazlo show saying, “Hey this is Travis Wright @teedubya, the guy who got the tweet from the Chiefs, and if you want to have a conversation, let's do it.”

Lazlo called Travis, and immediately they were on air. In the digital world of media today, it is all about attention and trust, and Lazlo couldn't pass up the chance to hype the story for his show's gain. Lazlo was chomping at the bit to destroy an Internet troll, live and on air. At first, he was echoing some comments from some Redditors, trying to make Travis look like a whiny idiot. It was clear that he had an angsty attitude about keyboard warriors and disdain for Internet trolls, who are always louder and braver behind a keyboard. Little did Lazlo know that Travis is that loud in real life, too.

On air, Travis stated many of the reasons why KC Chiefs fans should be fed up with the Kansas City Chiefs at that point. He mentioned a litany of strategic, management, and cultural errors that the organization had made, and while they were having this conversation, he actually started converting Lazlo to his line of thinking.

Lazlo recanted, acknowledging how Travis was right, how it had been since 1983 that the Chiefs have drafted a first-round quarterback! The Chiefs hadn't won a playoff game since Joe Montana was the Chiefs QB. Maybe the Chiefs were bad because they weren't spending enough on salaries? Why do the Chiefs not let the former players and alumni come to Arrowhead? Why are they hoarding salary cap dollars?”

Nobody changes Lazlo's opinion, yet on that day, Travis did with his own well-informed and impassioned one.

After Reddit and Lazlo, Travis was contacted by local TV stations to do interviews about the scenario. It made Yahoo!'s front page. USA Today talked about it. Mashable wrote about it. There was even a segment on it on ESPN.com.5

When you have digital sense, you realize that page views are an economic driver that has forever bastardized traditional and nontraditional journalism and media, in potentially irreparable ways. The 2016 election debacle in the United States proved this more than any other single event in recent history.

Travis never expected the Chiefs to respond to him and tell him to get a clue. If you look at the comments of any YouTube video on the Web, you see people saying way more rude, and sometimes disrespectful or disgusting, things about artists or brands than TW was saying to the Chiefs. And most of these comments are never replied to by the brand.

As a fan, Travis had been to more than 100 games at Arrowhead Stadium. He was a loyal paying customer (100 games ain't cheap). A passionate advocate for Kansas City sports teams, he had been to every crushing home playoff loss the Chiefs had had since 1986. Them telling him that “it's his choice to be a fan and get a clue” just wasn't good digital sense. Of course it was his choice. It was also his choice and his right to vent his displeasure, as any customer can, when the product they support fails to deliver.

Shortly after the 2012 NFL season, Travis spoke at the SMX Social Media Conference in Las Vegas. After he shared the story about the Chiefs, a half dozen other social media directors and managers of other sports teams approached him. They all stated that the day after the Chiefs told him to get a clue, every one of those six sports teams had a meeting. The all told their social media managers to not be rude to their fans and they began to institute formal governance around their branded accounts on social media channels.

Digital Bit: Don't feed the trolls. (Also don't feed the Zombies, which you will read about in Chapter 2.)