As marketing students, we know twitter as a
medium for brands to connect with consumers and build communities, but as a
twitter user, I know it as a Pokemon binder of entertainers making social
commentary, having ridiculous insights, and complaining about internal
struggles. In flipping through my twitter binder of 570 accounts, I noticed
that the corporations I follow fall along a scale from “Meh” to “Doritos
Ontario…” I should explain.
The majority of corporate Twitter accounts
I’ve come across are just that – corporate. Unless you’re a passionate brand
advocate, it can get tiring following a corporate twitter account because their
tweets feel more like advertisements than entertainment. As Brian Solis put it,
social media is merely a tool. It is a platform to foster meaningful
conversation between firms and consumers. In an AYTM survey, 63% of
respondents followed corporate accounts and 26% of them preferred accounts with
personality. So why are there still corporate twitter accounts out there that still
fall under the “Meh” category?
A couple months ago it was revealed (to
nobody’s surprise, really) that the region-specific @DoritosOntario twitter
account was a fake. The account poked fun at hokey corporate accounts that
lacked personality by aggressively
promoting Doritos (in Ontario) to its 2682 followers, but that’s not all! The
account (now inactive) was self-deprecating, questioned its mortality,
occasionally referenced rap lyrics, and gave the best/worst advice to its
followers.
We're interested in connecting with the Ontario community through social media but not really please buy a few bags of Doritos™ today.
— Doritos Ontario (@DoritosOntario) July 8, 2013
Don't forget to eat Doritos™ today. There's still time. Crush Doritos™ into your toothpaste and go to bed with fresh Doritos™ breath.
— Doritos Ontario (@DoritosOntario) July 11, 2013
@SaddestTiger What you're feeling is the actual universe. This is existence. A brutal, unrelenting, laborious drudge. Pls eat Doritos.
— Doritos Ontario (@DoritosOntario) July 5, 2013
And my personal favourite:
Does your sadness level correspond to the # of Doritos bags consumed? What's your #sadnesslevel? Enjoy the Doritos.
— Doritos Ontario (@DoritosOntario) July 19, 2013
I know, the account was a parody and there
is no way a real corporate account could pull this off, but the point is that Doritos
Ontario had a personality. It engaged with its “consumers” in a humanistic way.
Doritos Ontario put out content you wanted
on your Twitter stream, not just static sales pitches. Firms that use a
structured and traditional approach to social media will not develop meaningful conversations because their
relationships with their followers will feel shallow and inauthentic.
And by the way, there are corporate accounts out there that are approaching the “Doritos
Ontario” end of the spectrum:
Couldn’t have been one bird, @adtothebone. Sounds more like 4.5 million. (Seriously, we did the math.) pic.twitter.com/aLYScFR3
— Official smart USA (@smartcarusa) June 19, 2012