#PricelessSurprise as MasterCard PR fail mocked by journos
An unwitting request from a PR company representing Brit Awards sponsor MasterCard has led to a massive social media backlash for all parties.
An unwitting request from a PR company representing Brit Awards sponsor MasterCard has led to a massive social media backlash for all parties. House PR drafted specific social media tweets and hashtags for journalists, telling them they would only receive press accreditation for the event if they promoted MasterCard before, during and after the show.
Telegraph writer Tim Walker forwarded on the poorly crafted email to Press Gazette, which concluded “We are really looking forward for you to join us at the awards with us on Wednesday“.
House PR urged journalists to enhance MasterCard’s sponsorship of the Brit Awards on their personal social media accounts, including its accompanied #PricelessSurprises hashtag (referred to in the email as #PriclessSurprises), and basically include any mention of MasterCard in their articles wherever humanly possible.
Walker told Press Gazette: “If they are going down that route they should really take out an advertisement.
“Going to the extent of drafting you a pro-forma Twitter message shows the extent to which Twitter is being polluted by all this sort of stuff.
“A lot of people on Twitter aren’t all that up on journalistic ethics. The sad thing is that a lot of journalists now haven’t perhaps been up through local papers and may not realise that this sort of thing isn’t ethical.”
Twitter responses to the revelation about the botched publicity drive have been hilarious, with my personal favourite from @FelicityMorse, who went with the classic play on MasterCard’s slogan: “Good press coverage is hard to bribe. For everything else there’s Mastercard. #PricelessSurprises“.
The incident highlights how easy it is to highjack a hashtag and have a social media campaign come tumbling down in the blink of an eye. Though a digital campaign can never be fool-proof, promoting something that tests the limit and ethics of a group of professionals as powerful as journalists is never a wise move, lest you want to end up a viral laughing stock.
