Nissan in new Australian social media backlash

Yesterday we heard about the Qantas Twitter competition that failed – the so-called “epic PR fail” where angry customers kidnapped the hashtag #qantasluxury with nasty comments. Today we hear of yet another Australian social media campaign that didn’t end the way the company anticipated. Nissan Australia launched a Facebook competition called “Micraspotting”  in which you could win a a $1250 voucher or a grand prize, which was a brand new car worth $20,000.

The problem was that the person that won the car was a good friend of the Nissan employee who ran the Facebook competition (calling him his BFF, best friend forever, on his blog). The $1250 voucher was also awarded to a person who is a Facebook friend of the same Nissan employee. Nissan was honest about the connection when they announced the winner and said, “The reality is that he won fair and square and all is fully above board.”

That didn’t stop consumers from saying that the competition was rigged and posting angry comments to the Facebook walls of Nissan Australia and Nissan Micra Australia.

Nissan Australia Facebook Micraspotting

People are really angry and Nissan aren’t responding very well to the comments. Almost no communication at all from the company to the Facebook fury. Instead, what do they do? Launch another competition! Do you think that competition is recieved well? No, of course not.

Nissan Australia competition

What Nissan should do is take a step back, withdraw plans for any new competitions and handle the reactions from angry fans before launching a new PR stunt. Not well done.

Update: See Nissans’ response in the comments.

What does it take to be Twitter elite?

Success in social media isn’t necessarily measured in number of fans or followers, at least not if you are missing out on other aspects of the social media etiquette. This guy considered his promotion skills so great that he issued a press release in which he boasts about his rocket to Twitter fame.

“What’s better than soaring to the top of a popular social networking site? How about skyrocketing to the summit of two of them? That’s the envious position The Powerful Promoter, Matt Bacak, found himself in last month when he entered the Twitter elite.”

But that didn’t sit well with parts of the online community. Prime reason: he has 1,923 followers on Twitter, but only follows 32 people back.

The press release has now been “dugg” 261 times on Digg (and counting) with the accompanying headline “The. Biggest. Douche. In. Social. Media.”. Comment like these aren’t exactly the reaction you wish for.

“He follows a whopping 32 people. What a conversationalist. He sure does add value to the site. (Please tell me this PR is a joke?)”

“What an ass. This is a perfect example of a spammer on Twitter. A no-name marketer with 1800 followers and he only follows back 32 people. He obviously went on a mass friend adding frenzy and then un-followed people once they began following him. Freakin’ jerk.”

The comments on Twitter aren’t much better:

“seems quite amazing that @mattbacak has so many followers and yet participates in minimal conversations.. all his me me me makes ME sick”

What can I say? Conversation is king. If you’re only participating to add friends, then you’re not in the social media “elite” in my book. And I’d rather have 100 friends in my network that are the right friends, than 1,000 random people I have nothing in common with. But that’s just me.

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