9. •
•
•
•
•
•
Approx. 20k negative tweets about Asda
#mentalpatient used 7k times in period
£25k donation from Asda
Mind got 1,629 pieces of coverage
9 media volunteers shared their stories
Celebrity supporters!
10. The spread…
• All those tweets
http://bit.ly/asdatweets
• The first one
http://bit.ly/firstmptweet
11. The next day…
• we can help educate your audience (email Rethink
received from a digital agency)
• …charity took to Twitter to encourage users to post
pictures (HuffPo)
• …charities have taken their own action against the
costumes - on Twitter (Mirror)
• …giving a voice (Various)
Strangely, the Asda #mentalpatient events were very quickly followed by another similar issueWhen someone pointed out that Thorpe Park had an attractionCalled the AsylumStill running Rethink’s social media at the time,I wanted to take a quick poll of whether people thoughtThorpe Park were out of line so used these hashtags#AsylumOK and #AsylumNO…
And this hashtag ended up being used by a campaigner called KatieIn a case of metaphorically ‘taking over the Asylum’And getting 6,000 people to sign a petitionAnd some media coverage.I cannot take credit for inspiring this As I had not the slightest intent of sparking something like this off!Here’s another more recent example of brands who underestimate their audiences…