During the Super Bowl, JC Penney sent out what appeared to be, at least to the people of the internet, two drunk tweets that caused quite a stir with thousands in the twitterverse retweeting and favoriting said tweets. Many others also took the time to reply and ridicule JC Penney for the ploy, using such memes as “Go home JC Penney, you’re drunk.” As it would turn out, JC Penney’s tweeter was not drunk, and the account was not hacked, instead JC Penney revealed, it was a #tweetingwithmittens problem. It was an ad campaign to promote team USA mittens and to create a narrative.
Turns out, a lot of people found the ad campaign to be a flub and that it backfired. With that said, though, the old saying goes:”any press is good press.” Is it possible that this too can hold true for JC Penney, here? Sure, the campaign was a little stupid, seemed rushed and was very easy to mock but at least the Company that was dropped from the S&P 500- it’s share price was too low- received press for something other than their impending doom. With Super Bowl ads going for $4 million per 30 seconds this move utilized twitter to get their ad out for however much they paid their ad agency and to much attention. While I am unlikely to go out to JC Penney to buy mittens, or anything else for that matter, it’s possible this stunt could bring the brand back into people’s minds and currently, any business they can create is very important. So it might have been bad, but they got Super Bowl attention for much less than $4 million. In that sense it is quite possible that JC Penney might have accidentally won the Super Bowl. #Winning. #IDidNotTypeThisWithMittens
