First things first. I’m a huge Adam Gilchrist fan and this is perhaps why I’m most disappointed about this attempted twitter campaign by Three for the 2009 ashes series in England. Three Mobile, sponsors of the Australian cricket team launched a twitter campaign featuring Adam Gilchrist and promising to post exclusive updates throughout the ashes series.
Being a huge fan of Gilchrist and a cricketing nut, I became one of his first 286 followers expecting to get some great commentary, insider information, score updates and even the odd direct interaction with the man himself. But none of that has quite happened yet…
Infact, we’ve seen almost nothing from the @Gillyashes profile over the first two test matches so far. A total of just 15 generic tweets so far and with that, not a single tweet was used to interact with any of his followers.
Searching for @Gillyashes tweets shows hundreds upon hundreds of @tweets directed to Gilly, with about 70% of those asking questions, opinions or advice on the current ashes series – 0 replies… Which is a shame really, as Adam Gilchrist is the kinda personality you’d have expected to get right into twittering, paticurally when your sponsor is paying you to tweet!
Gilchrist & Three could have created a cult following throughout this series if they were tweeting great content, but they’ve missed the boat and @gillyashes has a ridiculously poor 286 followers at the time of posting…
I can’t say I’ve ever really seen such a high profile brand / personality #fail on twitter – but that was until I experienced the Three Mobile @Gillyashes campaign hanging lifeless & follower-less on twitter.
I’d love to hear some opinion on this? How would such a powerful combination of brand/personality fail to deliver anything remotely decent on what would have been such a simple social medium?
I’m calling this the first #Failed Twitter Campaign from an Australian Brand / Personality… (too harsh?! sorry Gilly, I really didn’t want to offend you in any way!)
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July 21st, 2009 at 9:28 am
We’ve all seen this happen with a few campaigns whereby celebrities are thrown into Twitter. The star in question doesn’t really understand what they can do with Twitter and engaging content fails to be written. Over-promising and underwhelming.
“What can go wrong? You only have to write 140 characters. It’s easy.”
Ethical or not, 3 was better off getting an active “ghost” tweeter to post on the sports star behalf, giving fans hourly updates while the Tests were being played and the odd bit of goss between matches. The power of the old “twit-pic” would have helped as well, giving the sports fans behind the scenes imagery.
Word will spread fast, so let’s see if the page picks up
July 21st, 2009 at 3:58 pm
Good call, Aden. A definite lost opportunity there – so far, at least…
Cheers,
Tim – Mumbrella
July 22nd, 2009 at 11:24 am
What I don’t understand is that it wasn’t like Gilly did a flurry of posts and then disappeared… he just posted very very few. And he seemed oblivious to the comments of others left there. Just odd more than anything.
July 22nd, 2009 at 2:20 pm
I couldn’t agree more! I follow a couple of other cricket luminaries (such as David Lloyd – @Bumblecricket) and after following Adam Gilchrist I also send Gilly a message telling him to follow people. I got a direct message back saying, “@gillyashes Nice to tweet you! Stay posted for the inside scoop on Ashes 09
” which I thought was great, as he was actually interacting with people who sent him messages.
However that was the end of it, no commentary on how things were going, how the weather was in Cardiff (which about 20 people asked him on Twitter during that last day) and no comments on the cricket whatsoever. I didn’t realise it was actually a 3 campaign, but that really does show a total lack of understanding of the medium and damages both Adams reputation and 3′s ability to market in this day and age.