Skip to main content

Is #AirAsiaScam a competitor driven trend?

By
On 12th April, a popular Indian newspaper published a story, "Who really runs AirAsia India?" It raised some interesting questions about the operations of Air Asia. It stated that "Documents, emails show that Malaysia’s AirAsia Bhd has final say in decision-making, in violation of the  Indian law."

Today suddenly after approximately a week I saw #AirAsiaScam trending #1 on Twitter. This came barely hours after Air Asia announced Air fares starting at Rs 999 for flights across India.

The twitter trend #AirAsiaScam had a huge list of Twitter users who were constantly Tweeting about the story that came a week earlier (with almost similar content). A careful look at the Tweets does indicate that something is amiss. 
In the Tweets Below #DipanG118 suddenly realizes that she has to Tweet something about #AirAsiaScam.
Similarly @ItsNewBeginning  had back to back Tweets about the scam, which of course they had read a week earlier. I'm not sure if it's a scam though.
Farman too had similar thoughts on Air Asia. 
And there's more. Rahul singh too had similar thoughts and decided to Tweet about it within a span of a minute. It's humanly impossible to type that stuff and Tweet it in a minute. (Or may be Rahul is an expert at it)
If you notice a lot of them have similar things to say. First is about the great job done for writing the story (it indeed is) and second is about "Silence of the government". Let's look the the great job stuff.
Silence of the government too did bother them.
In high probability the trending of #AirAsiaScam is being driven by someone. Also the folks who are Tweeting about the issue have in high likelihood been incentivized by someone. It definitely draws attention. If you look closely and pay attention to the content you'll soon realize that this is junk.
Looking at the timing (coming hours after the announcement of fares), it is quite possible that a competitor is doing this (i.e. getting #AirAsiaScam to trend).

If that's the case (in high probability it is), it is an extremely bad attempt at misinforming the public. It is also a colossal waste of money.

One of the biggest challenges of marketing on social media is that while it is an information highway, it can suddenly become a mis-information However one needs to know that the consumer is not a moron. (she is your wife ~ David Ogilvy)



There are a few people who observed and criticized the twitter trend of #AirAsiaScam.

Labels:

Popular posts from this blog

Your Customer - Another line in a database

By
Email marketing can be the trickiest thing in the online marketing jigsaw. Most promotional emails end up as being marked as read or spam. No one cares! Well because most of the time, the ones sending it through a database also don't care.
Read More...

Marketer's Job: Showing the money

By
A marketer's biggest dilemma is a client who misunderstands his service. " A writer who is in a hurry to be understood today or tomorrow runs the danger of being misunderstood the day after tomorrow ." ~ Johann G. Hamann Most of the times marketers face the challenge of being misunderstood. During the days when I was part of a startup, I felt that even if I'd break my head, the client will not really understand what my firm was offering and the benefits it gave.
Read More...

Giving the finger to a scripted life!

By
It's crazy to take jobs just because they look good on your resume. That's like saving sex for your old age. ~ Warren Buffet. You have plans for your life, career etc. You've built an entire script but what is this based on? Scott at Ted talks about how almost 80% of the people around the world don't like the job they do. In his career, he found one day that most of the job he did was automated by his competitors. Building the resume was clearly not way forward. It was during that time he he heard the quote by warren buffet, " It's crazy to take jobs just because they look good on your resume. That's like saving sex for your old age ". This was when he left his job. While there are know universities, which talk about finding your passion, Scott talks about a lens that can help in finding the job we love.
Read More...