When it comes to social media, it’s a make or break moment for a brand’s reputation. Years ago, I had written about how one of my friends got bashed by Samsung’s distributor in Qatar. Looks like Nissan Dubai has set themselves up with a similar issue that is now backfiring for them on Twitter.
Tagging celebrity accounts, getting called out
Nissan is looking is raise awareness for fake spare car parts. They decided to leverage Twitter for their awareness campaign #TakeOutTheFake. A quick glance at their Twitter account shows that they started this campaign near the end of February. It has now caught attention for the wrong reasons because they tagged one influencer who called them out on it – Casey Neistat.
Casey’s replies must have caught Nissan by surprise, as he put them on the record asking them about it. He even asked why they used a branded GIF if they’re not even working together in official capacity. I don’t know about you, but I find Nissan Dubai’s reply not fitting to the whole situation.
Nissan is being called out by many users including some prominent UAE-based influencers (EMKWAN) who were tagged by their account. Everything from the execution to the wrong message of the campaign is up for discussion (some people are thinking that most of the accounts they tagged just inflate their numbers with fake followers). Surely that’s not the point of the campaign, since they’re an auto brand and fake spare car parts is still a problem
A quick look at the other tweets posted by Nissan Dubai showed that they didn’t even reply to them. This is likely due to the volume of mentions they receive each day, that it would have been buried in the conversation volume.
On another note…
I don’t think Nissan Dubai is aware of the recent rules by the US FTC when it comes to influencer marketing, especially since some of them are US-based. Given that some of their tweets have tagged Hollywood names (Robert Downey Jr., Lady Gaga, Kevin Hart, Ellen DeGeneres, and more), it wouldn’t take long for the FTC to do a quick search on social media about it.
Here’s a message to those running the Nissan Dubai account:
- Next time you do a campaign that involves celebrities with a big audience on social media, it’s common courtesy to contact them first and discuss the business terms.
- You did mistype Maisie Williams’ official account (which actually leads to an account that was suspended), hence do check for correct accounts before posting.
- One more thing: you might want to recheck your official account for fake followers again compared to the last time on February 13.
Photo credit: Nissan car (Photo by Albin Berlin from Pexels)
