I was checking the trending hashtags on Twitter this morning when I noticed that a McDonald’s tweet showed up while I was scrolling through the “Invisible Children” hashtag. They used a Promoted Tweet, which means their tweet will show up above all organic search results for one or more specific keywords, in this case “Invisible Children.” In fact, McDonald’s tweet appeared in front of a tweet from @Stop____Kony that had 263,387 retweets (the McDonald’s tweet only had 8 retweets)! Here is their full tweet: How does ur family make mealtime fun? Show us 4 chance 2 win London 2012 trip. #HappyMealChefs http://mcd.to/xYpmUA.
I was checking the trending hashtags on Twitter this morning when I noticed that a McDonald’s tweet showed up while I was scrolling through the “Invisible Children” hashtag. They used a Promoted Tweet, which means their tweet will show up above all organic search results for one or more specific keywords, in this case “Invisible Children.” In fact, McDonald’s tweet appeared in front of a tweet from @Stop____Kony that had 263,387 retweets (the McDonald’s tweet only had 8 retweets)! Here is their full tweet: How does ur family make mealtime fun? Show us 4 chance 2 win London 2012 trip. #HappyMealChefs http://mcd.to/xYpmUA.
This begs the question – why was McDonald’s targeting the “Invisible Children” keyword even though their tweet had nothing to do with it? Misleading social media ads are pretty common on Facebook and Twitter because you can target any keyword or demographic in your ad, even if they’re not actually relevant to your brand or product. It appears that they were trying to hop on a trending hashtag to get their tweet more visibility.
There have been creative instances of brands hopping on trending hashtags – @PosterRev targeted the #tigerblood keyword to advertise their Charlie Sheen posters. However, that keyword at least made sense with what they were advertising. Do you think it was in poor taste for McDonald’s to target the “Invisible Children” keyword? Let us know in the comments!
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