The image seems to be everything to the Chinese brand Huawei. This has been made very clear after an incident in which an employee sent out a New Year’s tweet using an iPhone.
On 31 December, Huawei wished their 500.000 followers a “Happy New Year” via Twitter. The only problem: the tweet was sent using an iPhone and, on the right hand corner of the tweet, this unfortunate mistake was clearly visible.
The Huawei managers in Shenzhen were clearly upset, especially because Huawei overtook its chief competitor Apple and now is the second largest manufacturer of smartphones in the world.
According to Reuters, the people responsible for the slip were sanctioned. Two employees have been moved down in the hierarchy ladder and have had their salaries cut by 5000 Renminbi (approx. €638) per month.
The mistake can actually be traced to Sapient, an agency responsible for the administration of social media for Huawei. There appears to have been a VPN connectivity problem when the tweet was sent and the person responsible used an iPhone with a foreign sim card to publish it. Twitter is banned in China and therefore users have to find different solutions, like a virtual private network (VPN), to reach the service.
Despite the fact that there is a clear explanation for the mistake would that clear the Huawei employees of all responsibility in the eyes of most, they still had to suffer the consequences. The tweet has since been removed and replaced by a different one a couple of hours later.
