McDonald’s Twitter promotion backfires as #McDStories is hijacked

by Marketing ON 25 January 2012

‘Big brand’s attempt at using Twitter hashtag for marketing backfires’

Sound familiar? That’s because it is. But this time it’s not the flying kangaroo feeling the wrath of the disgruntled public, it’s fast food giant McDonald’s.

The burger brand had paid for the privilege of inserting promoted tweets into users’ timelines, intending to tell the stories of farmers who produce the ingredients used by the chain, using the tag #MeetTheFarmers, but a decision to change that tag to #McDStories went horribly wrong.

McDonald’s only used the #McDStories tag twice, but it was too late. The hashtag had been hijacked.

Social media director for the fast food chain, Rick Wion, tells PaidContent.org, “Within an hour, we saw that it wasn’t going as planned.”

The tag had taken on a life of its own. And continues to do so. One Forbes blogger may have coined a new social media term, dubbing it a ‘bashtag’.

A quick search for the tag on Twitter delivers Marketing these (admittedly selected, more entertaining) results.

One of the original tweets:

And some of the… others:

Including one from the ‘president’ of Vietnam:

Business Insider has posted an extended statement from Wion, who claims the negative tweets accounts for only a small percentage of the total:

Last Thursday, we planned to use two different hashtags during a promoted trend – #meetthefarmers and #mcdstories.

While #meetthefarmers was used for the majority of the day and successful in raising awareness of the Supplier Stories campaign, #mcdstories did not go as planned. We quickly pulled #mcdstories and it was promoted for less than two hours.

Within an hour of pulling #McDStories the number of conversations about it fell off from a peak of 1600 to a few dozen. It is also important to keep those numbers in perspective. There were 72,788 mentions of McDonald’s overall that day so the traction of #McDStories was a tiny percentage (2%) of that.

With all social media campaigns, we include contingency plans should the conversation not go as planned. The ability to change midstream helped this small blip from becoming something larger.

Twitter predicts ad surge

by Marketing ON 21 May 2010

Chief operating office of Twitter, Dick Costolo, has forecasted an advertising boom as the micro-blogging platform prepares to launch a new advertising model.

According to the company’s blog, its ‘Promoted Tweets’ platform will take the form of ordinary Tweets that businesses and organisations want to highlight to wider groups of users.

It has so far signed up Best Buy, Bravo, Red Bull, Sony Pictures, Starbucks and Virgin America to the platform.

Costolo told Wired.com that he believed the company will eventually become profitable, but he declined to provide a timeframe for achieving profitability.

“We were valued at over a billion dollars last September, so we’re going to live in a world where we need to be generating hundreds of millions of dollars in revenue. We’re thinking about big, big numbers,” Costolo told Reuters.

Huffington Post adds paid tweet service

by Marketing ON 15 December 2009

US online news service The Huffington Post has begun offering marketers an option to insert paid comments into the publication’s Twitter feed.

The service will allow advertisers to place paid tweets among the Post’s live news and events feed.

Critics have suggested that the plan may be rejected by followers as being disruptive, but the Post’s chief revenue officer Greg Coleman indicated that marketers will receive guidance from resident community experts on how to join conversations.

“You cannot use the social engagement for the purposes of really hawking your products. The advertiser is really put in a position where they need to add value to the conversation that’s taking place,” explained Coleman.

Backing the success of the program is the Post’s high level of traffic, which reportedly topped 72 million hits in March 2009.

To support the initiative, Coleman insinuated that new sales staff would be hired in the New Year and third-party research on its traffic will likely occur.

2010 the Twitter money year, says Stone

by Marketing ON 27 November 2009

Next year Twitter will start making money, according to founder Biz Stone.

Stone indicated to a group of Israeli journalists that the microblogging site would start bringing in the cash through ‘non-traditional’ advertising and he will unveil the company’s plan early next year on how it will do it. He stressed the company mantra was that it was in no hurry to come up with a business plan.

“There are no dates when we need to break even. We have plenty of money in the bank,” said Stone.

Stone also went through a number of Twitter-related updates, including funding from investors, future acquisitions (“Something we are definitely interested in”), keeping its platform open to developers and the possibility of the company appearing on the stock market.

He also mentioned that the platform could possible expand from its current offerings of English, French, German, Italian and Spanish.

Already in partnership with professional networking website LinkedIn, Twitter revealed in October that it had made deals with Microsoft and Google to allow access for its real-time content, meaning that plans to add an advertising component to its business plan would see the companys value skyrocket.

Powderfinger harness Twitter power

by Marketing ON 7 October 2009

Australian band Powderfinger have harnessed the power of Twitter to perform three secret ‘guerilla’ gigs in Brisbane, Sydney and Melbourne on one day.

No further clues were given out, as fans were directed to the band’s Twitter page to find out more. The location of each show was revealed 25 minutes prior to each performance, with the band selecting the location for each show just prior to this.

Approximately 1,400 fans were waiting for the band in Post Office Square, Brisbane, when they arrived at 8:30am for the first performance.

As word spread throughout the day, about 2,000 fans arrived in both Sydney’s Martin Place and Melbourne’s Federation Square.

Paul Piticco, Powderfinger’s manager, indicated that shows were unique in that fans, media and even the band’s record label only found out at the same time when and where each show was going to be.

Piticco said the band wanted to do something special for their fans, and give them the opportunity to interact with the band directly via the Twitter profile.

“We honestly thought we’d get a couple of hundred people in each location, plus bystanders. We were completely blown away by the numbers that were waiting there to greet us in each city,” exclaimed Piticco.

The band’s Twitter followers went from 1,800 to over 6,000 by the end of the day.

The idea for the shows was developed by Piticco, Carney Nir from the band’s management company and John Collins from Powderfinger after the band’s impromptu busking session at Splendour in the Grass in Byron Bay.

Virgin Blue offers cheep Twitter fares

by Marketing ON 31 August 2009

Virgin Blue Airlines is celebrating turning nine years old with $9 seats on sale across a range of routes in the first of what the airline says will be regular Twitter sales.

The $9 ‘Tweet seats’, which the company indicated are priced deliberately at less than a bottle of birthday champagne, will only be available through the Virgin Twitter site.

From 9pm until sold out, the airline will offer 1,000 $9 one-way fares for Virgin Blue Twitter fans to destinations including Canberra-Sydney, Port Macquarie-Sydney, Brisbane-Newcastle and Rockhampton-Brisbane.

The airline Group will also add Pacific Blue flights to its future tweet seats sale fares, offering deals from Australia to destinations such as New Zealand, Fiji, Vanuatu and Samoa.

Virgin Blue Group chief executive officer, Brett Godfrey, said, “This is a bit of fun and also a bit of an experiment trialling distribution through one of the latest forms of social media. Our marketing team has been closely watching worldwide consumer trends in markets where travellers are already social media savvy and we see Australians fast developing a following for Twitter as a source of the latest information regarding a wide range of products and services including airline news.”

Outsource ideation to twits

by Marketing ON 15 July 2009

Marketing agencies can now outsource ideation, through a new service called Ideas Culture.

The brainchild of tech expert Yvonne Adele (a.k.a. Ms Megabyte), Ideas Culture delivers solutions to creative problems through a global team sourced via twitter.

The business offers three services: ‘Ideas While You Sleep’, ‘Ideas With You’ and ‘Ideas Via You’. The first allows marketers to submit an idea by 4pm and receive over 100 solutions by 10am the next morning. The ‘Ideas With You’ option offers an interactive workshop, techniques and evaluation, while the latter offers techniques to kick-start brainstorming.

Yvonne explained, “Ideas are the lifeblood of advertising, marketing and PR agencies but the reality is it can be difficult to drive creative thinking while running on empty. How many times have brainstorm sessions fallen flat or old ideas have simply been recycled?”

Ideas Culture employees are called Idea Agents hailing from 170 countries and range from multinational CEOs to comedians. The agents are paid for their ideas, which are then owned by the client.

Austereo (FoxFM, 2day, Triple M) recently engaged the company to assist in ideation for a pitch aimed at enticing a console games company away from their traditional TVC and web spend.

“Key to the success of Ideas for You is each Ideas Agent brings their own set of unique thoughts, insights and experiences. Creative thinking theory has proven that the best way to spark new ideas is to use fresh eyes and random connections,” Yvonne said.

Amnesty International seeks to right WWII wrong

by Marketing ON 3 July 2009

Targeting social media users, Amnesty International has launched a new initiative aimed at extracting an apology from the Japanese Government on behalf of WWII’s ‘comfort women’.

Amnesty International claims that during WWII the Japanese military forced women into internment camps to serve as sexual slaves for Japanese armed forces. It is believed as many as 200,000 women were put into slavery as a result.

The ‘Comfort Women’ initiative allows users to create a butterfly, pick its shape and colour (and then rotate the resultant Rorschach-style colour disc). Following this, respondents are asked to provide their name, email and mobile number to ‘sign’ a pre-generated petition.

Supporters are asked to download their butterfly, set it as their picture on Facebook, MySpace or Twitter and then change their status to reflect their action and link people to the initiative.

Amnesty International’s initiative aims to urge the Australian Government to pass a motion asking the Japanese Government to apologise, as well as compensate these women. The organisation also requests users donate toward skywriting a butterfly above parliament house to emphasise the point.

Borders thrilling marketing

by Marketing ON 17 June 2009

Background

In a world first, Borders, thriller-author James Patterson and his fans collaborated to produce a Chain Thriller through social media. The ebook was available for free and only online.

James Patterson wrote the first and last chapters, while fans competed to write the 28 chapters between. The chapters were released consecutively over 30 days from March 20 to April 19.

Brand: Borders
Agency: Citrus

Objective

Bring the James Patterson novel concept to life, creating awareness and participation
Boost James Patterson’s profile
Generate buzz and increase sales of his soon to be released books
Increase Borders’ email subscriber database
Demonstrate Borders’ innovation and leadership in book retailing, and
Build new relationships through social media to later leverage.

Strategy

Digital marketing agency Citrus created the ‘Chain Thriller’ concept to define the book’s collaborative nature. It then developed a social media strategy to generate conversation before the release of the first chapter. Through Facebook, Twitter and RSS, this strategy was to encourage interaction around the release of each chapter.

Finally, the social media platform was used to generate buzz around the book’s release.

The campaign was a prelude to the launch of James Patterson’s forthcoming books.

Execution

To launch the ‘Chain Thriller’ concept, Citrus executed a three-stage campaign.

First, Citrus developed a personalised email campaign as a call to action for authors and direct users to visit the author submission microsite.

Second, to retain interest while the selected authors were busy writing their chapters, Citrus developed a daily ‘Thrill’ on Twitter. Citrus sent a tweet, setting the scene for a thrilling scenario, designed to inspire followers to get in on the action by creating their own short thriller conclusion. Phase two aimed to keep followers engaged for one month until the chapters were released for download. A ‘Chain Thriller’ Facebook group also allowed authors to collaborate with each other during the writing process to create seamless transitions between chapters.

During the third phase, the completed chapters were released over 30 days through an email campaign, Twitter and RSS notifications and a novella microsite.

Results

The ‘Chain Thriller’ Facebook community generated over 860 members looking for updates on chapters and contributing to the discussion around what would happen next.

Since the launch of the ‘Chain Thriller’ campaign, readers have demonstrated their interest, not only in the online book, but in James Patterson’s back catalogue as well. Since the campaign’s end, sales of James Patterson books have increased dramatically.

Citrus’ daily ‘Thrills’ engaged Borders’ customers and had them interact with the brand in a new way. Readers ran with the concept; 193 followers were gained with many creating daily thrill responses and re-tweets.

James Patterson was also impressed with the collaborative work of the other authors, commenting, “This project was great fun for me, and for the readers and writers alike. The story turned out well, especially given that there were so many writers and that they had to work very quickly. What we have created together is the first draft of a promising suspense novel!”

Twitter goes crazy with Mad Men

by Marketing ON 9 April 2009

Due to the success of her tweets as Mad Men character Peggy Olson, PR practitioner Carri Bugbee is to establish a Twitter-based ad agency for media and entertainment companies.

The show, which has just begun screening on SBS in Australia this month, gained popularity in the US due to the buzz created through social media platforms such as Twitter.

Bugbee recently won a Shorty Award for best content producers on Twitter in the advertising category, despite undertaking the role as a fan rather than under any official Mad Men capacity.

Main character Don Draper’s Twitter account has attracted more than 7,092 followers but Bugbee’s Peggy Olson has amassed 12,623, easily beating out her boss. She also has her own LinkedIn profile.

At the beginning of the series second season, characters from the show started appearing on Twitter. Fans mistakenly thought the Twitter characters were part of an AMC marketing push on behalf of the show’s producers and when lawyers for the network asked Twitter to suspend the accounts of the characters believing there was a breach of copyright, within a week they had returned.

Bugbee believes that marketers can learn a lot from the Mad Men fan fiction, including that producers should strive to reserve the Twitter accounts for all the characters in whatever show or film they are making.

She also advises producers to overcome their need to control all aspects of their work and to use their fans to their advantage.

Bugbee now plans to build this success into an expansion of her 15-year-old business, Big Deal PR.

Magpie & Friends out for brands on Twitter

by Marketing ON 17 March 2009

Magpie & Friends has been launched intending to generate a conversation for brands within Twitter, the hot-topic micro-blogging site.

It says that it is currently Twitter’s largest growing ad network, with more than two-million reachable followers.

The company aims to enable brands to deliver controlled, relevant and targeted messages into this area and a recent performance report says Magpie & Friends average click-though rate sits at 9.95%.

Magpie & Friends also announced the introduction of its additional compensation models and will be introducing pay per click, pay per lead and pay per sale in addition to the pay per view model it has already been using.

“To be honest, we have been blown away by the uptake by tweeters. This growth has enabled us to introduce further compensation models that will provide additional options for our clients and greater earning opportunities for our tweeters,” explains co-founder, Jan Schulz-Hofen.

“Despite initial negative response to the pending launch of the company, these results clearly indicate that both tweeters and advertisers have been able to establish relationship that is proving to be mutually rewarding.”

More info: http://be-a-magpie.com/customer