Tuesday, February 26, 2013

When It's Great To Get Hacked!

 

The old adage says all press is good press. That played true last week for Burger King. The fast food royalty's Twitter account was hacked by jokesters who changed its header photo to its arch nemesis's golden arches and claimed the company had been acquired by McDonald's.
 
At this news, you'd probably think: Sound the alarm! Social Media catastrophe!
 
But the real results of the hack were quite the opposite.
 
Because of the snafu, @BurgerKing acquired 30,000 new followers in a single day, saw a 300% increase in conversations and was mentioned in 450,000 Tweets!
 
The profile ended up being suspended until Twitter restored the true Burger King access, but all in all BK keeps the new followers and the publicity.
 
Of course, some of the conversation and mentions were a bit disparaging toward Burger King. This is to be expected. To balance that though, many tweets were sympathetic, and now @BurgerKing gets the added impressions of all the new followers obtained from the hack.

What do you think, is getting hacked worth it?

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