Jordan’s brainiac Twitter stunt for Snickers backfires
A Twitter stunt that saw the model and reality star Jordan (aka Katie Price) tweeting about economics and financial woe in her Twitter stream, which is usually filled with celebrities, things pink and horses, has backfired.
Mars-owned chocolate bar Snickers signed up Jordan to show how a Snickers bar could help restore you …and apparently fill your head with vacuous rather than serious thoughts in the process.At first the 1.5 million followers of @MissKatiePrice thought her account might have been hacked. Surely that was the only explanation for Jordan to suddenly start commenting on the goings on in the Eurozone rather than Celebrity Big Brother:
Large scale quantitative easing in 2012 could distort liquidity of govt. bond market. #justsayin
— Katie Price/Jordan (@MissKatiePrice) January 22, 2012
OMG!!Eurozone debt problems can only be properly solved by true fiscal union!!! #comeonguys — Katie Price/Jordan (@MissKatiePrice) January 22, 2012
Chinese leaders now likely to loosen monetary policy to stimulate growth.Yay!!
— Katie Price/Jordan (@MissKatiePrice) January 22, 2012
Great news about China’s latest GDP figures!! — Katie Price/Jordan (@MissKatiePrice) January 22, 2012
What no one thought it could possibly be was Jordan, as successful a business woman as she is, doing the tweeting herself, but then came the reveal.
The whole thing was a promotional marketing campaign created byAbbott Mead Vickers BBDO, that also involved @AmirKingKhan and @BeefyBotham, for Snickers, as Price tweeted:
You’re not you when you’re hungry @snickersUk #hungry #spon lockerz.com/s/176796815
— Katie Price/Jordan (@MissKatiePrice) January 22, 2012
And then explaining to Lord Sugar that life isn’t always (but surely mostly?) about shiny pink things and that the stunt was a bit of Twitter fun:
@Lord_Sugar its not all about pink, nail varnish and horses
was a giggle xx — Katie Price/Jordan (@MissKatiePrice) January 22, 2012
You can see where they are going with the idea can’t you? You need the choclatly goodness to be yourself again! Reach for that bar now.
Except people quickly began pointing out that this seemed to imply that through the act of eating a Snickers bar Jordan was going from being a brainiac, tweeting about the economy and quite serious matters, to tweeting about reality TV and underwear.
So Jordan wasn’t hacked, she was shilling for Snickers, who were insulting her intelligence.
— Brian Whelan (@brianwhelanhack) January 22, 2012
So the implication of that Snickers campaign is that eating them keeps Katie Price vacuous and inane. Fine work. — Will S… (@teletextpage152) January 22, 2012
You can see that it sounded good on paper, but once it is done and dusted the message seems to be that Snickers will make you a moron and will in fact seriously degrade your IQ. How did Jordan’s PR people think that this was a good idea? It isn’t as though she needs the money.
True Snickers has got lots of mentions on Twitter, and a few blogs, and a piece in the Sun, and we’re all talking about it, but does this count as a success? However, some are pretty clear that it is a fail:
@prweekuknews Er….big #fail! Too random but again, we’re all talking about it. Off to go and buy a Snickers ;o)
— Lisa Wisniowski (@LisaWisniowski) January 23, 2012
@LisaWisniowski @prweekuknews Agreed. Uneasy renting account for ads. OFT warning about it ow.ly/8CBLY, but we are all talking… — FreestyleInteractive (@freestyleint) January 23, 2012
“@prweekuknews: A PR fail or success? >> >> Jordan’s brainiac Twitter stunt for Snickers backfires bit.ly/yxzRLK /@thewalluk” FAIL
— Jim Murphy (@Murfsmurf75) January 23, 2012
@prweekuknews success for Snickers – raising awareness of their campaign but epic fail for Jordan! — Caroline Mc G (@CarolineAnnPR) January 23, 2012
@prweekuknews Personally thought it was a success! Whether you thought it good or bad everyone is talking about it! It’s nuts!
— Rebecca Murch (@BexMurch) January 23, 2012
#FAIL! “@prweekuknews: A PR fail or success? >> >> Jordan’s brainiac Twitter stunt for Snickers backfires bit.ly/yxzRLK /@thewalluk” — KPR Consulting (@kprconsulting) January 23, 2012
@prweekuknews A PR fail or success?- After discussion at Instinct HQ- fail for Jordan but success for Snickers because it’s got us talking!
— instinctpr (@instinctpr) January 23, 2012
@prweekuknews no, but we are all now saying we need a ‘Snickers Moment’ in the office to steam our Genius Juices! — Briony Peters (@brionybeee) January 23, 2012
All Comments
Could not disagree with this much more.
Essentially your argument is that because Ms Price doesn’t actually know or care about the world economic crisis, what she chooses to ‘be’, aka ‘herself’, is a bad thing.
Everyone is different. Ms Price has been a great sport in accepting to poke a bit of fun at herself.
The insinuation that people have read these tweets and come away thinking that a “Snickers bar could…fill your head with vacuous rather than serious thoughts” is pathetic. A bit of a high horse you find yourself on GM.
Ultimately, Ms Price gets her pay packet, Snickers have got people talking (without fundamentally damaging their brand) and no-one is hurt.
Can’t help but notice the people you have quoted in the story above to are all ‘in the industry’. You might find that the public reaction is very different. They are the people that matter after all…
This is howler a real stinker. How this kind of clunky and short sighted type of campaign gets signed off, I’ll never know.
All the tweets you quote as evidence for a backfire mention the Snickers brand, as does this very comment I’m writing now. Snickers are has been tweeted about, blogged about and written about a good deal because of this stunt and that is surely the end objective. Whether the mentions are entirely positive about Jordan or not is besides the point. The stunt of “lending” an account to a brand has itself generated column inches and I would imagine the agency behind this are pretty pleased.
@pssmith I don’t agree. we all talked abou Qantas when it had its hashtag snafu. Plenty of column inches but not one of them good.
This is certainly a mixed bag. Plenty of mentions, but with plenty saying fail.
For me the root of the idea is that Snickers dumbs you down. The have been plenty, but then again maybe it was just a bit of fun that no one has taken very seriously.
[...] The idea of a brand ‘taking control’ of the content of an account ruins the authenticity of Twitter and cheapens the experience. As well, The Media Blog highlighted that many Twitter users felt the messaging of the ‘ad’ was off with the suggestion that ‘hunger made Jordan briefly intelligent but one sugary snack would return her to normal’. The social space at the best of times doesn’t like to be deceived, especially to find out it’s been part of an advertising campaign – it’s no wonder that Snickers now face the wrath of the Social mob. [...]
[...] Snickers bars #fail with Jordan/Katie Price twitter stunt. [...]
[...] it was actually because they needed a Snickers – you can read a scathing review of it here. It was an interesting campaign and got people talking – mainly because reading Katie Price [...]