The Story Behind My Most Viral Tweet at Topps
To this day it’s probably my greatest social media post.
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I was sitting in my hotel room after a long day at the National Sports Collectors Convention in 2019. My legs hurt from standing on concrete for four days. Even that plush red carpet didn’t help (IYKYK).
It should have been a night filled with steak at Gibson’s and resting for final day of the greatest place on earth for collectors.
Instead, I was doom-scrolling — before it was cool.
The world wasn’t on fire yet, just Topps’ Twitter mentions.
Cleveland Indians pitcher Shane Beiber called out Topps on a mistake made on the back of his 2019 Stadium Club card calling him Justin — as in Justin Beiber, the singer.
At the time, I was the Marketing Communcations Manager at Topps and one of my duties was handling social media. That meant posting content, replying to comments, and dealing with the fallout from social media posts you never saw coming.
I was in the room with a friend and I looked at her and said, “What do I say?”
I couldn’t let it go. The quieter Topps remained, the worse the comments got.
My default is humor. I make jokes about everything even at the most inopportune times. It’s my default setting.
A good, relevant joke was my way out.
Even though I was not a Justin Beiber fan, there’s no way I couldn’t listen to the radio without hearing his hit “Sorry.”
There was a line from the song that was absolutely perfect for that moment.
So, I tweeted at Shane Beiber from the Topps account, “Is it too late to say sorry?”
Ok, so I got the line wrong! But it was close enough that the PR disaster in the making turned into a win. Topps’ reply received headlines in the biggest media outlets.
Justin Beiber wound up tweeting to Shane, and eventually, Topps made a card with Shane Beiber that included an inscription of “Not Justin.”
To this day it’s probably my greatest social media post.
I left Topps soon after the Justin-Shane mix-up. I got to leave on a high note, or as Justin would say, “We gonna party like it's 3012 tonight.”
Hobby Headlines
Topps recently featured me on its Topps Ripped blog where it showcased my Derek Jeter and Yankees collection. I always love talking about cards. Thanks, Topps! (link)
A collector is showing off his impressive Shohei Ohtani card collection (link).
Defector took a look at the number of parallels coming out of Topps products these days (link). Do you think there are too many cards?
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