JP Morgan’s Snarkaggedon

There is something enjoyable about seeing a big company fail in social media. Perhaps it is solace in knowing that everyone fails, thereby justifying any past or future mistakes from the rest of us. However, JP Morgan’s troubles with the #AskJPM tag in 2013 also bring in an element of relishing in the ridicule a wealthy, powerful company had to go through in a time when its name was not exactly synonym for transparency and honesty.

BloombergBusiness reported at the time that JPMorgan “faced criminal probes including one into possible bribery in Asia and another examining its relationship with Ponzi scheme operator Bernard Madoff. The firm ha[d] been negotiating an agreement with the U.S. to resolve multiple mortgage-bond probes, and two ex-employees were indicted for allegedly trying to cover up a record trading loss last year.”

A week after underwriting Twitter’s IPO, JPMorgan invited people to their live Q&A on leadership and career advice.

The invitation to submit questions to JPMorgan was appreciated by a lot of users, though with different intentions in their mind.

After only 6 hours JPM realized that had been a bad idea, and decided to cancel their Q&A.

This “Snarkageddon” could have been avoided by realizing that the audience JPM intended to reach was different to the one that could see the message. JPM intended to have a small, cozy dinner with a few guests but instead invited the whole city to its home. The conversation JPM intended to have would have been more appropriate to be announced through LinkedIn, but JPM wanted to use Twitter because of its involvement in underwriting its IPO. It was a clear fail in matching goal, medium, and audience.

Probably more than one person within JPM could have anticipated this outcome. McDonald’s hashtag #McDStories had been hijacked a year before, as was Qantas in 2011. Avoiding this social media failure required not only an assessment of what their brand meant for those “on their side”, but also what it represented to the rest of people seeing their tweet. Given the public and unfiltered nature of Twitter, a different message (hashtag, in this case) would have been in order.

Surely, however, it was not the last time a campaign like this backfired, as SeaWorld would learn a few years later.