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.
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.
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.