What do you get when you combine a boring Super Bowl game with too much alcohol? Lots of drunk tweeting, of course. But you tend not to see corporate brands publishing typo-ridden messages to their thousands of followers — until last night, of course. And it was all fake.
Sometime before halftime, J.C. Penney tweeted out these two messages to its 290,000 followers.
Who kkmew theis was ghiong tob e a baweball ghamle. #lowsscorinh 5_0 — JCPenney (@jcpenney) February 2, 2014
Uh?
Toughdown Seadawks!! Is sSeattle going toa runaway wit h this??? — JCPenney (@jcpenney) February 3, 2014
I am not going to lie, I went to every football game in high school and it still took me a couple of seconds after reading this to realize that they’re not called “toughdowns.” I blame this cutthroat nerd environment I work in.
So of course everyone who wasn’t paying attention to the game took the opportunity to make fun of J.C. Penny, including some other brands. Oh god, the brands.
Eat a #SNICKERS, you’re not you when you’re hungry RT @JCPenney Who kkmew theis was ghiong tob e a baweball ghamle. #lowsscorinh 5_0
— SNICKERS® (@SNICKERS) February 3, 2014
We even jumped in to comment from the @Geekosystem account:
Was @jcpenney hacked? Are they trolling? Whet the haails gowing ohn heer? pic.twitter.com/xoXWY9anrw
— Geekosystem (@Geekosystem) February 3, 2014
After the tweets got ridiculed more than the Denver Broncos’ defense (DID I DO THE SPORTS JOKE RIGHT?), J.C. Penney finished up their little tale of Super Bowl mystery by bringing it back to a thing you can buy.
Oops…Sorry for the typos. We were #TweetingWithMittens. Wasn’t it supposed to be colder? Enjoy the game! #GoTeamUSA pic.twitter.com/e8GvnTiEGl — JCPenney (@jcpenney) February 3, 2014
That’s right, it was all planned. Kate Coultas, a spokeswoman for J.C. Penney, gave BuzzFeed the scoop (because apparently that’s who we go to for advertising news now):
We knew Twitter would be very active but wanted to find a way to stay above the Super Bowl fray and instead create our own narrative[….] Given it was cold, and we are selling Go USA mittens — we thought it could be a fun stunt!
Twitter hoaxes are incredibly common now, but this is the first time I can think of in recent history that a legitimate brand-sponsored Twitter account pulled off its own hoax, and successfully at that. Is this going to start becoming a trend in social media marketing, now? Will everything just be a hoax all the time? What is real, man?
Speaking of which! Much to our chagrin, the fake Burlington Coat Factory Twitter did not have anything to add (also, we’re very upset that they’ve changed their name and appearance to represent that they’re fake. Burlington should be happy to have such a wonderful feed misrepresenting them!) regarding J.C. Penney’s undrunken antics, but they did have this helpful message for the Red Hot Chili Peppers.
Hey Chili Peppers, you look like you need some #coats you going to catch a cold
— Not Burlington Coats (@NotCoatFactory) February 3, 2014
They’re not wrong. Please wear a shirt next time, Flea. Please.
(via Jezebel, image via JCPenny)
- Meanwhile, CNN is tweeting like it’s Upworthy, and that sucks
- A physicist recently tried to solicit Twitter messages from time travellers
- In Australia, sharks have Twitter accounts to warn beachgoers of their presence
