How I killed a Twitter campaign for Nokia
About a year ago, a TV show was launched. Two guys were running down the streets to find clues to earn money. Other clues were delivered through text messages on Nokia phones. It was a first step of a Nokia campaign for one of their N series phones. This year, their agency, Wunderman, thought it would be nice to launch a similar campaign, but online. So they had the great idea of finding a bunch of well known bloggers and asked them to be the Ovi guy. The online campaign was all about users finding the Ovi guy. Ovi guy was to be selected the one who gets the most votes. He would then “win” a phone. All the others will receive credits for being part of this stuff.
When you’re blogging for seven years and everyone knows you as an influencer, it’s kinda stupid to just send an e-mail and say: “Look, you can win a phone!“. Thank you for the huge opportunity of giving you lots of free advertising for nothing. So I turned down the “offer I couldn’t refuse“. Sorry, but I already have a damn much better phone, it’s called HTC Desire and runs on Android.
Let’s spam in social media!
After finding a few bloggers interested in the “opportunity”, the agency asked them to spread the word about the campaign. So they started to tweet: “Please vote me to become the Ovi guy!“. You know, there’s this Facebook application I use too, that takes the tweets and publish them on Facebook. It was OK once, it was OK twice, but after tweeting a dozen times in a couple of minutes the same links and messages, and after seeing them both on Twitter and Facebook (what can I say, I love duplicates?), then retweeting supporters tweets, now that’s annoying.
Both my Twitter and Facebook “walls” were full of the same tweeted and retweeted links. It was too much for me to bare. It was my time to tweet:
If I see any other tweet or retweet of this free advertising campaign for Nokia, I’ll start unfollow without exceptions.
One who probably hasn’t seen my tweet retweeted some supporter’s message. I removed him from my list. And there was silence.
About influencers
It’s good to know influencers. But if you want to convince an influencer to help you, you have to come with a solid proposal. It doesn’t matter if it’s money or if it’s just a cool idea. The important thing is to come with something strong, not with “the opportunity to win a phone“. Come with a good implementation strategy, not with some “please spam everybody” .PDF file. I don’t give a crap about your phone. If I want one, I’ll buy one, I can afford it and I will get it if I need it. If you’re asking stupid questions, I’ll tell you to go find yourself some other suckers.
Now, guess what? It’s almost a week since they started the campaign in social media and it’s silence as far as it comes to the bloggers I follow on Twitter. No one speaks a word about the Nokia campaign and no one wants to become the Ovi guy anymore. I am really sorry for the agency, but this is not how you plan an online campaign. You don’t get results by spamming people. You have to find creative ways to engage consumers.
I like Nokia as a brand, my wife owns and uses a Nokia E72 phone, she’s satisfied with the software and capabilities (though I dislike Symbian), they have great PR and great marketing, they have one of the best PR agencies in Romania, but they so suck when it comes to the online medium. “We don’t have budgets for online communication“, Wunderman representatives say. Well, then be creative! Otherwise, stop dreaming.