Toyota learning the hard way that Twitter isn’t a spamming service for its products
As we head into the Super Bowl every company and their marketing teams are doing their very best to get their products in front of as many eyes as they possibly can and spinning everything they do with some sort of Super Bowl theme.
Even more so than previous years these companies and their marketing people are looking to all of the social media services to be their ace in the hole when it comes to getting their message out to “the people” but just as with previous years there are some companies that are falling all over themselves to show how badly they still don’t understand how social media works.
At the head of the list this year, so far anyway, is Toyota as they try to make their Camry brand of car model a hot trending topic on Twitter. The problem is that they are acting more as a mass spammer instead of a company looking to communicate with current and potential consumers; and as Drew Olanoff over at The Next Web points out they seem to be getting a helping hand from Twitter itself.
In what is probably the worst Twitter promotion I’ve seen on the platform since the company launched in 2006, Toyota has created a slew of accounts and is spamming people about what it is calling the “Camry Effect a Friend’ Giveaway!”. The worst part is that they’re all verified accounts, so while Twitter isn’t involved in the promotion, someone at the company definitely knows about it.
All the Toyota CamryEffects accounts seem to be concentrating replying on any message steaming through Twitter that even reference the Super Bowl or either of the teams. The replies by various of the Toyota CamryEffect verified accounts are not about creating a conversation but instead to steer people to their Win a Camry page.
In typical fashion the irritated Twitter users are reporting the Toyota accounts for spamming but nothing is being done by Twitter to reign this abuse by suspending the offending accounts, which is the company’s typical action when any other company or person is reported for spamming.
