UPDATE: According to AdWeek, Pace's apparent Twitter implosion was actually a prank on comedian Kyle Kinane carried out by other comedians. Parent company Campbell Soup Co. claims that Pace never even had a Twitter handle, though the now-suspended @Pace_Foods handle was apparently marketing Pace for months. Even though it was fake, that still doesn't make it OK for your brand to lazily use a bot to auto-replay to tweets. 

Dive Brief: 

• Pace salsa was dragged into an embarrassing Twitter war when their account auto-replied to a negative 10-month old tweet in which comedian Kyle Kinane poked fun at the brand.
• When Kinane noticed the odd reply from Pace, he posted even more negative tweets to see how far the auto-replies would go. 
• Once the brand noticed, Pace tweeted about having technical difficulties and began an elaborate and unnecessary conversation with Kinane via direct message, which the comedian of course shared with Twitter followers. 

Dive Insight: 

The lesson to be learned from this embarrassing interaction is that lazy social media is not only ineffective, but can also come back to bite your brand. A smart brand would know that auto-replying to every Twitter mention with the same bottled response could result in bad exposure. The direct message interactions from the team further underscore that Pace did not have a good social media strategy in place.