That is what Acura (or whoever is behind the account) about to learn as they “spammed” the wrong person, David Meerman Scott author of several marketing books like Real Time Marketing and PR. (great book and this is not an affilate link)
Oh.. I think its going into his book in the future too.
What happened? Well lets say they have not read any of my memo on personalizing tweets and they took the easy way out by using a tool called Local Response, a tool that helps clients to send tweets or @mentions to people in real time based on checkins, hashtags/keywords etc.
Also, they have forgotten to read a short line from Local Response which recommends clients to:
Continue the conversation when you get responses, even negative ones. People just want to know you’re involved.
What Acura did was send mass tweets or similar tweets to whoever was tweeting using the hashtag #jassfest2012 to let them know about the their VIP area.
Here is a screen shot.
Don’t get me wrong. I think automation CAN work on twitter, that is why I wrote about how KLM was automating twitter.
However this is different and I feel Acura have clearly missed a HUGE opportunity by automating this process as people thought they were genuinely getting a personal tweet from the brand.
I’m not saying it doesn’t work though. I am sure it works as one of the case studies on the Local Response page showed that they receive an average of 22% click through rate.
Probably due to people thinking they were getting personal tweets. I could be wrong.
Having said that I wonder what people will think when they found out that it was automated? Will you get pissed when you find out the tweet you thought was for YOU was sent to everyone else on twitter too?
Love to hear your thoughts.
Hi Aaron, Thanks for spreading this. I do think it was poorly handled but could have been really cool. And you’re absolutely right – I’m planning on adding it to a future book. It is too interesting an example not to!
Cheers, David
My pleasure David. I am a huge fan of your book and your blog too.
Can’t wait to read about this in your book.
Hey Aaron,
Nice post! I think they shouldn’t have automated it in the first place, I mean…common. If a brand like Acura can’t manage to have a real person or even a small team monitoring the web for keywords or hashtags AND doing real interaction during a certain event, something must be off.
I’m reading David’s Real-Time Marketing & PR, loving it!
Take care!