Blog Archives
Burger Wars
In the wake of the horsemeat fiasco, it has today emerged that Burger King’s Twitter account has been hacked with the profile picture being replaced by a McDonalds logo and a message that the company had been sold to the rival hamburger chain.
“We just got sold to McDonalds! Look for McDonalds in a hood near you,” one post read. It also posted messages such as: “If I catch you at a Wendys, we’re fightin!”
The tweets stopped after a little more than an hour and meanwhile McDonalds tweeted in response to the apparent hack: “We empathize with our @BurgerKing counterparts. Rest assured, we had nothing to do with the hacking.”
It is not known who might be responsible for the breach but I do wonder if it has anything to do with the Animal Rights Movement … after all, isn’t hacking a horseriding discipline?
Hashtag #hashtag
So it’s official! Hashtag has been voted ‘word of the year’ by the American Dialect Society.
While the word has been around for decades, hashtags initially became popular on Twitter, where users would put them within tweets to make a larger comment or joke. From there, it spread onto Facebook and everyday speech and a tipping point came when the only three words used on the cover of Newsweek magazine’s final print issue were preceded by a hashtag, making the cross over from web to print complete.
Twitter hashtags are a great way to organize tweets for common subjects or events, but people also use them as a way to connect to others over a good laugh. Once the twitterverse starts putting in their two cents, you get crowd-sourced, viral comedy. I’ve put together what I think are five of the funniest hashtag PR disasters that I’m sure will make you laugh:
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#Susanalbumparty: Susan Boyle’s PR people are probably wishing they had re-read their promotional hashtag after missing its alternative message to Twitter users. Causing great mirth on the social network, the unfortunate hashtag spawned a deluge of mock invites to the party until it was hastily renamed #SusanBoylesAlbumParty.
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#McDStories: Back in January, McDonald’s #McDStories hashtag backfired when instead of offering “good news stories” about the fast-food chain, users began flooding the tag with claims of fingernails in burgers and other nasties.
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#WaitroseReasons: When the supermarket asked shoppers to complete the sentence: “I shop at Waitrose because …” using the hashtag #WaitroseReasons in September, it perhaps should have expected the subsequent tirade of jokes about the brand’s posh image – though many have said the way Waitrose responded turned the campaign from disaster to success.
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#MadeMeSmile: Vodafone was left bemused when Twitter users redeployed the PR #mademesmile tag to publish tax avoidance allegations directly to the company’s website.
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#QantasLuxury: Airline Qantas won the accolade of PR disaster of the year at the end of 2011 after opening up their promotional hashtag #QantasLuxury at a time when thousands of passengers were stranded overseas.
Purists will of course say that hashtag isn’t in fact a word but a symbol (like exclamation mark or question mark) and that the real name for this symbol is octothorpe – not quite as catchy though is it?
Life in the fast lane!
In the People’s Republic of China, during most of the Communist era, private ownership of property was abolished, making it easy for residents to be moved on – but now the laws have been tightened up and it is illegal to demolish property by force without an agreement.
This has led to an elderly couple refusing to move as a road is built round their apartment. Luo Baogen and his wife insist on living in the half-demolished building in the city of Wenling, in Zhejiang province, China because they believe that the relocation compensation offered by the government is not enough. Now the only building left standing, the five storey block is a strange sight as cars drive around it while the couple remain living inside. To ensure the couple’s safety, adjacent rooms in the building have been left intact but all their neighbours have moved out, according to local media.
The road paved through the Xiazhangyang village leads to the Wenling railway station and is yet to be officially opened. What’s the betting that there will soon be a service station and McDonald’s occupying the ground floor?
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