Oh-No You Didn't! UCC Coffee Spilled Over Twitter

Earlier this month, UCC coffee, one of the popular coffee manufactures in Japan, made a big mess on Twitter in a matter of days. Here’s what happened.

They have been running “Good Coffee Smile Campaign” since 1999 using mas-media. This year, they decided to use Twitter in addition to ads on TV, newspaper and magazines. On Feb 5, they set up 11 bot accounts to push tweets to people, who used words such as “coffee” “ucc” and “campaign”. Immediately, this “campaign” back-fired, and on Feb 7, they suspended Twitter campaigns and posted an apology on one of the accounts.

This shows how different social media is from the traditional advertising and the marketing. You should never use social media to “push” something. If you are not willing to communicate – socialize with the people, you should stick to banner ads.

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Motoko Hunt

President & Search Marketing Strategist at AJPR

Motoko Hunt manages the SEO for all of Adobe's properties in Japan and the APAC region. Prior to joining Adobe, Motoko established AJPR in 1998; she has been providing search marketing consulting services targeting Japan and Asia to companies around the world. Her services have made a big impact on the search marketing campaigns of some of the world's most popular multi-national brands. A number of her articles have been published on industry websites and printed media including MultiLingual Computing and the International Journal of Localisation. She also writes about the Japanese online market on her blog at AJPR and contributes to several online magazines in Japan and Asia. She served as a member of the board of directors of SEMPO in 2010-2012, and is a chairperson of the SEMPO Asia-Pacific Committee.

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