While many brands have adopted social media into their overall marketing strategies, they are quickly finding out that engaging with their customers online is not as straightforward as putting up a billboard or shooting a commercial. Two global brands that experienced criticism this week after their Twitter stunts fell flat were McDonald’s and Snickers.

McDonald’s paid for the hashtag #McDStories to be promoted on the Twitter homepage to initiate conversation around their brand. They hoped that users would tweet heartwarming stories about fun times spent in McDonald’s. However, the whole stunt backfired as users used the promoted hashtag to insult the brand, claiming the  food gave them food poisoning and discussing the fast food chain’s cruelty to animals. McDonald’s social media director, Rick Wion, stated that while the brand carefully selected the words to describe its promoted tweets, they couldn’t control that both “fans and detractors will chime in.”Just a day later, McDonald’s tried again by using the promoted hashtag #LittleThings, asking people what little things brought them joy. While this hashstag fared slightly better, tweeters still managed to use it speak negatively about the brand, pairing it with the original #McDStories hashtag.

Snickers was another brand that got a lot of negative publicity over the weekend with a ‘PR stunt’ that involved hijacking Katie Price’s Twitter feed @MissKatiePrice. The brand sent out four tweets in first person regarding the Eurozone debt crisis to Price’s 1.5 million followers. Her fans automatically assumed that her Twitter had been hacked until  a tweet that stated “You’re not you when you’re hungry @snickersuk #hungry #spon” and featured a photo of Price holding up a Snickers’ bar. Other celebrities with large Twitter followings, such as Rio Ferdinand, have also been involved in similar stunts for the brand.

While the campaign is certainly imaginative, the practice of advertising without any transparency is frowned upon in social media. Also, the Katie Price stunt insinuates that the product restores you to your ‘original self’- which in her case, appears to be shallow and stupid. It is worrying that a brand that is aimed at mostly young audience would associate itself with such ideals. It seems that the stunt would have been more successful and transparent if each tweet sent by the brand has been accompanied by a hashtag (preferably a promoted tweet so it would be visible to all) and featured a more well-known tagline that followers could easily identity, such as Kit Kit’s ‘Give Me a Break’.