Burned consumers love to vent on Twitter, but in a new twist on griping a 28-year-old Chicago businessman paid $1,000 to complain on the platform.
Hasan Syed launched the first-ever promoted Twitter campaign by an individual calling out a company — in this case, British Airways, which lost his father’s luggage.
Promoted tweets are typically used for big brands and small businesses to spread messages on the micro-blogging platform.
Syed turned the Twitter tables, using the self-serve ad-buying system to give voice to the consumer.
Some marketing experts are wondering whether the move will spark a trend among disgruntled consumers.
“For someone to have promoted a tweet on the consumer side to talk about a brand is unusual,” said one source, who was familiar with Twitter’s ad services.
Syed revealed yesterday that his promoted tweet campaign cost him $1,000 and reached almost 80,000 people, garnering almost 15,000 “engagements,” which are retweets and favorites.
Syed plunked down the cash Monday when the luggage went missing after a Chicago-to-Paris flight.
“Engagement went through the roof,” Syed told The Post yesterday. “Everyone can identify personally with traveling horror stories.”
The self-serve allows any user to target tweets to a particular audience — in this case Syed wanted to reach British Airways followers or users similar to them.
“I’m not sure if this is money well spent, but I suppose it wasn’t badly spent,” he said. “I’d much rather spend money on an exotic vacation than on promoting a tweet to retrieve luggage that shouldn’t have been lost in the first place.”