Is Twitter biting the hand that feeds it?
A couple of things have happened recently that have put brands on Twitter under the spotlight.
Firstly there was the Snickers campaign featuring ‘out of character’ tweets from Rio Ferdinand, Katie Price and Ian Botham which led to the denouement of “You’re not you when you’re hungry” with a link to Snickers. The scorn heeped upon the celebs from the Twitterati was vicious along the lines of “Do you really need the money that badly?” and “I’m not on here to be advertised at”.
Mc Donald’s was another brand to be accused of badly misjuging the medium. They initiated a #McDStories campaign where they encouraged customers to tell their favourite story about McDonald’s. Of course what they got they back was a lot of abuse and stories about hygiene standards, poor meals and bad experiences. McDonald’s pulled the campaign within an hour.
And if that wasn’t enough, RIM have been slated for their admittedly rather childish team of cartoon Bold superheros…when RIM asked Blackberry users to tweet their new year resolutions for the #Bebold characters the twiterrati replied with derision. When contrasted against the cool of Apple…it gets worse.
Clearly these brands got it wrong. But does it matter? Marketing commentators, journos and brand experts get terribly excited over a “Twitter storm” but do people in the real world?
The Twittersphere does descend into puerile abuse very quickly, whatever the topic (as do comments on youtube). It makes you wonder how seriously people take it. And the muck-raking rumour-spreading (Gary Speed) does nothing for Twitter’s credibility.
I can’t imagine in the great scheme of things McDonald’s is that bothered. It knows that there is a considerable and active anti-McDonald’s constituency. The Snickers campaign simply wasn’t very good. The tweets were clearly written “by a marketing person”. But the copywriting was clunky and too corporate. The same with RIM, a misjudged campaign in any medium.
The danger is brands will be scared off by all this adverse reaction. But they shouldn’t be. It’s the same as anything else. Do your customer research and proposition development properly and you won’t cock up. Try and understand the dynamic and don’t be naive. There will always be people who don’t like your brand and very many more who don’t give a toss. Accept that and you will be fine.
I would suggest the marketing backlashes created a lot of hot air amongst a group of people easily ‘shocked’. And before you know it they will be onto the next “OMG have u seen????”. If I were a brand I would not get too concerned about adverse comment on Twitter. Long term, I doubt it has much impact and at least you’re being talked about. But then again, I would not put all my marketing eggs into the Twitter basket. It is one social media tool with as much chaff as wheat.
