It was only a week ago that JPMorgan Chase helped launch the wildly successful Twitter IPO, and one can't help but wonder if executives at the financial services conglomerate are now wishing they had never heard of the popular microblogging site.
While the IPO went well, JPMorgan's effort this week to tap into the fresh social media hype with an ill-conceived Twitter-based Q&A session is already being described as a case study in how not to use social media.
Hours after promoting a live one-hour Q&A session with vice chairman James B. Lee Jr. using the hashtag #AskJPM, the session, scheduled for today, was cancelled when it became clear that the mood of the vast cyber universe was swinging from sarcastic to angry and back.
A story by DealBook yesterday detailed the initial reaction from Twitter users to JPMorgan's open-ended offer to answer questions.
But the hits just keep on rolling across Twitter with funny, nasty, and sometimes crude references to JPMorgan's recent challenges.
This afternoon @RacehorseDC asked, “What does it feel like when crime does pay?”
And @ddayen wants to know, “What's more satisfying: securities fraud on pension fund investors, or foreclosing on all those Alt-A loans?”
Then, of course there is @JohnBrubaker who wants to know, “Where do I apply for the now vacant PR job at your firm?”
JPMorgan has been mostly silent since cancelling the Q&A session, but a company spokesperson did respond to an email request for comment with the following: “#BadIdea! Back to the drawing board.”
It's nice to see the company still has its sense of humor, but the drawing board would have been a great place to start before turning to something as unconstrained as Twitter with such a wide-open offer.
“I would have to assume that JPMorgan is not tapped into enough of their audience,” said Ted Birkhahn, president of Peppercomm, a marketing and communications firm. "If they had taken a minute to think about how their audiences are thinking about them these days, they probably would not have gone through with trying to promote a Twitter Q&A.”
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Mr. Birkhahn said the first mistake was trying to set up Mr. Lee to communicate via the company Twitter account instead of his own account, which would have made it seem a lot more like a real conversation.
“Using an individual Twitter handle is inviting people in to talk directly with an individual,” he said. “In order to operate on Twitter, you as the individual should be active and familiar to the Twitter audience, and I don't think! that's the case here with James Lee.”
The JPMorgan spokesperson person, who asked not to be identified, assured me that Mr. Lee does have his own Twitter account, but did not respond when I asked what his handle is, and I couldn't find it through my searches.
“Not establishing the parameters of the discussion and opening the floor for anything and everything that anyone wanted to ask is a recipe for disaster in social media,” Mr. Birkhahn said. “Of course, even being specific doesn't prevent the audience from going off on tangents, but that goes back to knowing your audience.”
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