Given that the results are completely predictable, I am amazed that there is always at least one Twitter #hashtag debacle to cover in every episode of The Beyond Social Media Show.
Twitter #Hashtag failures like these make me wish I could be a fly on the wall at some of the meetings where ideas like these are approved.
Here are three of #hashtag #fails we covered in episode 123 of Beyond Social Media Show:
#ThisIsEgypt Tourism Twitter Campaign
Egypt’s tourism authorities launched a new promotional ad campaign, featuring a whimsical video showing the country’s rich diversity. It ends encouraging viewers to share the hashtag #ThisIsEgypt.
And surprise, surprise, it backfired, perhaps because of terrorism, extremist violence, a government that tortures people, etc. etc.
We discussed a similar campaign – which had similar results – by the Syrian government’s tourism organization in October. The theme of that one was “fun in the sun.”
IBM #HackaHairDryer Twitter Campaign
In a ham-handed attempt at interesting more women in tech, IBM asked women to re-engineer hairdryers. (Doh!)
They pulled the campaign a few days later when accused of sexism. Several female engineers said they were too busy working on things like robotics and DNA sequencing to play with hair dryers.
#AskLaneBryant Twitter Chat
Lane Bryant’s “ask me anything” Twitter chat prompted replies like:
- “Why do you hire thin women to work in yr stores and then apparently encourage them to tell me about how “slimming” stuff is?”
- “Why do you refer to your customers as “Real Women” as if slender women are somehow imaginary?”
Wondering: were they surprised at the responses?
