
Another week, another hijacked hashtag leaving a corporate social media team with egg on its face.
This week was the turn of BRIT Awards sponsor Mastercard, whose PR company outraged some journalists by asking them to promote #PricelessSurprises on Twitter in return for attending the awards. Telegraph columnist Tim Walker posted the request online and the hasthtag was soon hijacked by understandably disgruntled members of the press and onlookers. Having your crass social media campaign backfire on you spectacularly #PricelessSurprises — Ed Hayes (@edjhayes) February 19, 2014
Good press coverage is hard to bribe. For everything else there’s Mastercard. #PricelessSurprises — Felicity Morse (@FelicityMorse) February 19, 2014
It’s since been claimed by Mastercard that attendance wasn’t conditional on coverage, but the damage was already done. Or so you might think. Stats from social media analysis firm SocialBro show that #PricelessSurprises was tweeted 14,992 times in 24 hours, and the reception of it was generally positive. Share this story