26
2011
Wimpy’s silly Twitter campaign
An article by 
I spotted the ad below on Twitpic. It’s for Wimpy, and promises an opportunity to win an iPad iPhone if you join Wimpy’s twitter stream. You know where I’m going with this, right?
Before I even clicked on the ad, I knew that what I was witnessing was a disaster campaign. Let me count the ways:
1. Offering iPads iPhones as a prize is passe.
It’s been done. It’s not original. It’s not “social-worthy”: no one is going to be so impressed with this that they will tweet it, or share it anywhere else or give it a second thought. (Unless it’s to actually comment on the fact that it’s a bit of a yawn).
2. It’s gimmicky, and probably illegal.
Well, it’s definitely illegal since believe it or not, Apple does not allow you to give away its products as a prize. But let’s ignore this little Apple quirk, and move over to our local laws. I am no lawyer or expert in the field, but I suspect that if you are going to be offering this kind of prize in this kind of manner, you need some rules, terms and conditions. I could not find any. I can’t even tell you when the prize winner is going to be announced, or whether they have to be South African.
3. Umm..it won’t work
I assume that Wimpy wants more Twitter followers. The worst way to get them is by offering a prize. The new followers are not fooling anyone. They signed up because they want to win an iPad iPhone, not because they are fans of the brand, or interested in its tweets. As soon as the competiion is over (when oh when?), they will be either unsubscribing or ignoring at the speed of light neutrinos.
4. But even if….
But Wimpy has gone and done it, and now has 440 followers (I have no idea how many they started off with before this competition, and a lot of the followers are either other brands/bots or overseas people). What would YOU do now if you were Wimpy? Me, I would make sure that despite the fact that I tricked my followers into signing up, I will now pleasantly surprise them by the absolute VALUE of my tweets. It’s no rocket since. Those tweets will be appearing in the streams for at least a short time, and Wimpy has a short window of opportunity to convert the I-want-an-iPad into the I-am-follwing-Wimpy-and-you-should-too.
But no.
Wimpy does not even understand HOW to tweet, nevermind doing a stellar job of it. Here is an example:
What’s the RT doing there? I don’t know either. And why is this not a DM? But most important, why must Bukosi send an email to INFO@wimpy.co.za. Surely we would all prefer to think that we are dealing with an actual real person who is concerned about our complaint? And I have the feeling that an email to an INFO address at a large company like Wimpy will just get lost in the inbox.
And the actual value of Wimpy tweets is … zero. Whoever is tweeting is either RT’ing, replying to Wimpy mentions or making silly comments. Which of these tweets would you like to see in your inbox?
Wimpy is not:
- Promoting the brand
- Promoting the product
- Driving people into the restaurants
- Creating a buzz (well, not a positive one at least)
My advice?
Wimpy should focus on writing tweets that add value to the reader. They’ll know they’ve have accomplished this when people start re-tweeting their tweets without being incentivised to do so. So, the tweets should be about new menu items, new specials, the current “kiddies toy”, new restaurants, etc. Tell people that you have TVs in store so they can watch the Rugby World Cup, tell them you have play areas etc etc.
Like I always say…social media is more common sense than rocket science.
Dumn, is writing a post about Wimpy giving away an iPad when their advert is clearly for an iPhone.
hehe oops. #JustSaying #Typo
I do agree though with there being no terms, which is illegal. #BRANDFAIL
All fixed
I would agree with you.
I would say that following food brands on Twitter offers no value.
These brands are not responsive enough for when actually does want info, for example, I’m hungry now and want to know where the nearest Wimpy is. Google will 99% of the time give you that info in five seconds while you might wait minutes or even hours for the official brand to respond. The only thing that these brands appear to do is RT tweets that are positive and ignore negative tweets.
Since following food brands offers no value they offer prizes to people in order to gain followers. Many brands and agencies are guilty of this, I too can be blamed for this by allowing a client to do this.
I believe that many ‘average’ people on Twitter and Facebook are happy to follow or become a fan if there is a chance they’ll win or get something. I’ve seen if first hand with competitions I’ve been involved in and seen it with sites like http://www.winstuff.co.za. http://www.winstuff.co.za has an audience on it’s site and Facebook page who’s only purpose is to win things. The people who visit the site daily are more than happy to sign up or provide whatever details are required to enter a competition. I suspect these are the same people who fill out entry forms at the till at the supermarket or garage.
Additionally I see every ad, print, web and project management agency offering ‘social services’. The agencies convince all their clients that they require a social presence in order to cash in on the easy money. They hire a social media ‘expert’ which could be a blogger with a dead-end job or recent student recruit who they pay very little to and then charge the client the cost of this person’s salary for these social media services. Given that these people don’t have enough PR experience or have enough authority to offer any meaningful engagement they’re left to RTing tweets and directing complaints to the client who is qualifies and allowed to engage with complaints.
My point is that this type of engagement offers no value to many people such as yourself it in it’s own mediocre way does work for many others. So if the brand is happy doing this then I don’t see why they shouldn’t. Obviously it’s a missed opportunity but if the brand doesn’t care when let them be.