Don’t #1 — Appropriate #hashtags
September 11th 2001 is a day that sticks in the memory of most people. Even here in the UK I’ve had several discussions this week asking “Where were you on that fateful day™?”
For the record, I was in the Old Angel pub in Nottingham. I then went home to an empty shared house (my housemates wouldn’t move in for another week) with no internet or TV. I had to hear the same 30 minutes of pre-recorded news repeating on Radio 4 all week. I could write about the damage 24-hour news has done to society but I think Charlie Brooker got there first.
This week, on the 20th anniversary of that fateful day™, a lot of people/companies/corporations decided to commemorate the event. Among them was 50 Cent aka that rapper most of you haven’t thought about for at least 10 years.
At this point, the tweet has been RT’d over 2000 times, so I’m definitely not the first to notice it.
A quick google tells me that Branson Cognac “is a brand coming out of France”. Putting aside the question of how appropriate that wording is, I’m genuinely surprised it’s not one of Richard Branson’s attempts at self-mythologising. Le Chemin Du Roi is a 50-aligned brand of champagne, and is “another bottle that rapper 50 Cent has added to his impressive catalogue of alcohol”.
Let’s be clear, I neither know nor care whether 50 himself wrote the tweet, or passed the responsibility onto an assistant. I’m not here to criticise the man himself or how he handles his operations. I want to use this as an example of how taking a standardised approach to everything is a bad idea, and how there surely must be such a thing as bad publicity.
(Initially I wondered whether Mr Jackson was having a disagreement with two of his brand partners, and posted the tweet deliberately to mess with them. “Oh you want me to use your hashtags? FINE, I’LL USE YOUR HASHTAGS” etc, but as he seems to actually own the brand, I guess not).
Personally, I think hashtags get unfairly maligned. They aren’t strictly necessary any more, but still work for branding and getting everyone to buy into a concept, and they can also be a source of humour if used correctly, especially on Tumblr. I would, however, question why you would use one to advertise a brand when you could just tag them directly — and this ties into how I think this ‘error’ may have occurred.
Those who don’t use social media professionally may not be aware of platforms such as Hootsuite and Buffer, which allow you to manage multiple accounts and channels from one window. Amongst the useful add-ons these platforms offer are hashtag managers. Say, for example, I’m working for an alcohol company. I can save all of our commonly used hashtags into the manager, and can then easily add them to my posts, avoiding any issues of spelling mistakes or forgetting recent campaigns. Wonderful. Pat on the back. Five gold stars.
The problem comes from building up a muscle memory. If I’m advertising a range of different brands, I might need to remember which hashtags to use for each brand. If I just build up a muscle memory — write tweet -> press hashtag button -> add emoji -> post — then I might not realise what I’m actually posting before it’s too late. Resulting in a somewhat inappropriate selection of hashtags for your memorial post.
The alternative? That Fiddy (or his PA) has consciously decided to jump on the 9/11 bandwagon to push his booze. No such thing as bad publicity, right?
Without access to his sales figures and a functional crystal ball, I won’t know whether that’s actually the case here, but surely we can all see the issue? Either these brands are now indelibly associated with crass, idiotic, commercialisation of tragedy, or nothing else matters and we should expect to see Fred West-branded gardening implements any day now.
Even more confusing — Mr Jackson has a range of alcohol brands and has only chosen to push those two in this tweet. Why? Does he think that drinking alcohol is taking a brave stand against Islamic fundamentalists? Does his Effen vodka brand seem a little too close to the Russians for comfort? If he’s going for the retro 20th anniversary vibe, why not mock up an image of the twin towers with Vitamin Water bottles?
Still, it’s ok. 50 Cent may have been obnoxious on social media, but fortunately the kind of people who drink overpriced celebrity branded champagne have better taste than to be fooled by such idiotic attention-seeking behaviour.
Oh.
Please note — I did try to find reviews online to see if any of these wines were any good, but I don’t trust someone’s reviewing ability if they can’t be bothered to set their microphone at the right level. Of course all the reviews were on YouTube, but that’s another matter…
Please also note — as far as I can tell 50 no longer owns any stake in Effen or Vitamin Water. I still think the jokes were too good to delete.
“Don’t” is a series in which I beg people doing communications work to stop doing awful, contradictory things. They won’t, but I can at least try.
