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Every so often, something occurs which shows why social media has to be integrated with other areas of PR expertise, such as reputation management.

Issues with errant tweeting, as experienced by Vodafone on Friday afternoon, illustrate why so many larger organisations are still as skittish around social media as a Chelsea player taking his wife to a John Terry pool party.

Vodafone typically uses its Twitter account to dispense technical advice and deal with customer service queries so its followers were probably aware that the overly informative Tweet about homosexuals and a desire for ‘large semi-aquatic rodents’ was unlikely to be official corporate policy.

The company responded quickly and admirably, replying to almost every ReTweet of the original message with a personal response explaining: “We weren’t hacked. A severe breach of rules by staff in our building, dealing with that internally. We’re very sorry.”

Simple, honest, apologetic and, most crucially, indicates that Vodafone has a social media policy. It was breached, the same way that email policies can be breached or employees can ignore that rule about not punching colleagues in the face.

The company’s actions simply indicated: ‘No social media crisis here. Move along.’

Whole Foods boss John Mackey may yet regret his admission that his stores sell ‘junk’ food but his supposed gaffe is not quite as Ratneresque as it may have appeared.

From an issues management perspective there are crucial differences. He was trying to be honest and outline his belief that his business had strayed from its original principles. Gerald Ratner’s famous words – beloved of media trainers everywhere – exposed his glee at selling ‘crap’ to customers.

So while Ratner’s jewellery chain collapsed under the weight of the media fallout from Gerald’s confession, there has been plenty of debate over Mr Mackey’s position in the ‘Bad PR Hall of Fame’.

At time of writing it is still one of the most viewed stories on The Guardian’s website – surely the newspaper whose readers are most likely to embrace Whole Foods’ renewed ethos – and many readers commenting on the story have praised his honesty.

Nevertheless, I bet his PR company have recommended another session of media training for the notoriously outspoken boss and blogger.