Yesterday, Chrysler apologized for a profane message about Detroit drivers that was sent into its Twitter feed by an employee at social media firm New Media Strategies who was then fired. Today, Chrysler announced it fired New Media Strategies. UPDATED.
In a brief statement, Chrysler said it would not renew its contract with NMS for the remainder of 2011. In a lengthier blog post, Chrysler spokesman Ed Garsten said after discovering the tweet and apologizing, it was NMS, not Chrysler, that decided to terminate the typist who terrorized the twits.
And in response to complaints that Chrysler should have given less of a fuck over a little bad language, Garsten agreed with what we had noted yesterday: Doing so would have dented the whole "Imported from Detroit" campaign launched to bolster the city during the Super Bowl. "With so much goodwill built up over a very short time, we can't afford to backslide now and jeopardize this progress." #TrueDat.
UPDATE: New Media Strategies chief Pete Snyder posted a response on his company's blog saying it respected Chrysler's decision and that the F-tweet "doesn't accurately reflect the overall high-quality work we have produced for Chrysler."
The statement was, best we can tell, not sent over Twitter.