Exploiting sick children, the Bankwest way
This post has been edited. Please read the footnotes.
Earlier today Bankwest launched a marketing campaign. For every retweet, Bankwest will donate a buck to a children’s charity. It’s not exactly a new idea. Corporations have been doing it for years on social networks. Before the campain launched it was already heralded as a success. Marketing companies will use this event in their powerpoint presentations for years to come. Hooray for Bankwest and their effective use of Social Media, right?
At the time of writing this post (12:30PM) the hashtag #tweetforkids has been used 370 times*. This number also includes tweets that are deemed inellegible under Bankwest’s terms and conditions. For the tweet to be valid it must reference both Twitter handles @Telethon7, @Bankwest and contain the hashtag #tweetforkids – only one tweet per person. If we take this figure, triple it (to be generous) and allow for a slight error margin for ineligible tweets, by 6PM today, Bankwest will have had the hastag used a total of 1,200 times.
1,200 re-tweets equals $1,200. Let’s round this figure up a bit more and say its $2,000.
Bankwest flashes a fancy $20,000 figure around and will only donate two grand?
We have around $18,000 left over that isn’t donated to charity.
Where does this money go?
2007 Bankwest Christmas Party
Bankwest launched the campaign at 8AM this morning and we have until 6PM tonight to do our bit for charity. That is a total of 10 hours. If the Perth Twitter community wanted to donate the entire $20,000 to charity, we would have been required to retweet once every two seconds. Is that even possible? Does Western Australia have 20,000 active Twitterers that are likely to retweet?
If you’d like to do your bit for charity, just do it. Don’t be lazy by letting some corporation foot the bill and gain added brand recognition for it’s half-arsed job.
Instead of re-tweeting, I went to Telethon’s website and donated $20. The amount wasn’t much as I already donate a fixed amount every year to various charities, but its worth 20 times more than my retweet would have been.
If you’re reading this page, you should donate – head on over to http://telethon7perth.com.au/Donate_Online.aspx.
For those at Bankwest/Commonwealth who are reading this and actually can make a difference, pull your head out of your asses and donate the balance to charity.
This is simply yet another case of corporate child exploitation.
Think I’m wrong? Tell me why in the comments below.
12:58PM EDIT: I’ve been told conflicting reports that the $20,000 is being donated regardless of the campaign – this isn’t mentioned in their Terms and Conditions. If that is the case, then my rant is over. Congratulations Twitter for doing all this work to improve Bankwest’s brand recognition.
1:35PM EDIT: Some people have mentioned that non-West Aussies can re-tweet as well. I am quite aware of this, however the percentage is low. To cover these instances, I did triple the figure. At the time of this update, I counted 485 retweets meaning Bankwest currently needs to donate $485 to Telethon – this is a lot less than my $2,000 estimate. Also keep in mind that this figure could be incorrect as the 485 figure also includes ineligible tweets such as those from @KelMck8274 who has spammed the hashtag over 50 times. See this link for details of similar offenders.
2:45 EDIT: As expected, the numbers that I was supposed earlier may have been incorrect. Counting Retweets is incredibly unreliable when you use the incorrect tools. And even if you do use paid tools, the numbers are always conflicting. Right now I’ve been told that the number of tweets as of this update is either 1,783, 2,227, 5,517 or 5,478. Please keep in mind that these numbers are purely obtained from searches of the hashtag which also counts ineligible entries under Bankwest’s own terms. Bags not getting the job of counting how many entries are incorrect.