A jerky video ostensibly filmed inside a swanky, closed-door event hosted by oil giant Shell goes viral this week, racking up more than 400,000 views in less than 48 hours, scores plenty of dishy headlines and gives birth to the hashtag #ShellFAIL. Another case of Big Oil being foiled by social-savvy activists? Yes and No. “No,” as in the Yes Men – that famous band of hoaxters were at it again and they somehow allow the oil giant to come away from this one squeaky clean.

If you were to sum up the philosophy of spirits marketers in two words, surely, it would be: sex sells. Could social media change all that? If the Belvedere Vodka PR mess that erupted on Twitter and Facebook over the weekend is any indication, then the creative guys better figure out some new bright ideas to sell booze and spirits.

It’s not everyday Goldman Sachs becomes the biggest social media story of the week. But that’s where the investment banking giant finds itself after a chief lieutenant quit and chose to publish a withering resignation letter in the newspaper on his last day on the job. You know the rest. The letter, published in The New York Times, detailed painfully a rip-off culture that preyed on “muppet” clients and profits at all costs. Naturally, the letter was the talk of Twitter.

The publication yesterday of the bombshell “Why I left Goldman Sachs” resignation letter left company brass in New York completely unprepared for the global fire storm of chatter that it’s stirred. To be sure, Goldman, a notoriously anti-social company, has taken a huge hit to its reputation – not to mention a $2.2 billion haircut off its market cap – that will be tough to buff clean any time soon.

Time and time again, that traditional marketer and PR mentality — dominated by the desire to create an impressive, big bang of a campaign without really thinking how it’s going to play out in real time and in an online world where everyone talks back — lets brands and agencies down.

As you can see from this handy, little graphic to my left, many of the world’s largest and social-savvy brands continue to fall foul of the social media screw-up. Or, looked at another way, corporate screw-ups are going social at an escalating pace. Just ask McDonald’s, Unilever, FedEx and Carnival Cruises, to name just a few.

This is the third and final installment of our series with crisis communications expert Neil Chapman who led crisis communications for BP during the Deepwater Horizon spill in 2010 and is now a senior associate at Wixted Pope Nora Thompson. Chapman gives us his view on how digital media (and particularly social) have transformed crisis communications strategy.

We continue our series with crisis communications expert Neil Chapman, former comms chief at BP during the Deepwater Horizon spill in 2010 and now a senior associate at Wixted Pope Nora Thompson. Neil gives us his view on how digital media (and particularly social) have transformed crisis communications strategy.

If the recent Costa Concordia tragedy or McDonald’s #McFail hijacking have taught us anything, it’s that even savvy digital marketers can still get swamped by the social media-fueled crisis. That’s why we’ve produced another helpful tool to help you and your social media team adroitly navigate the lurking corporate crisis.

In 2012, corporate communicators will continue to grapple with the impact of social media – especially in the realm of crisis communications. How can they tailor and adapt plans to take into account a rapidly changing world that expects them to provide information almost instantly, Neil Chapman writes.