Toyota-Gives Customers $500 During Its Tweetathon

Toyota-Gives Customers $500 During Its Tweetathon

Toyota has taken to Twitter to promote its latest end-of-year sale, offering its customers the potential to get five hundred bucks, just for tweeting this: "If I get my new Toyota during Toyotathon they'll give me $500 just for this Tweet. http://buyatoyota.com @Toyota #shareathon."

"If you get your new Toyota by January 3rd, you can earn a $500 pre-paid debit card, just for Tweeting about it," according to Toyota's Twitter page. "Until December 15th, the Twitter users with the fastest fingers can get one of 250 certificates available each day."

While I'm usually all for companies taking to social media to engage their customers, this is one instance where I'm left wanting. Earlier this year, I wrote about how Toyota's recall woes were made worse because it had largely ignored the social networking space. Had the company understood the power of that medium it would have realized that active, personal participation would have gone a long way to quelling fears, responding to concerns, and directing people to the appropriate places to get answers and help. Instead, Toyota was late to the game and used "canned" responses, which created little satisfaction to concerned owners.

I asked a Toyota spokeswoman if this new Twitter campaign came about as a result of its experience during the recalls of the past year and didn't get a satisfactory response. At least it appears that the company is trying to figure out what works and what doesn't in the social space, which is a good thing. But the unfortunate reality is that this promotion comes across more like spam than anything that engages the consumer in a dialogue. It's great that customers get money back once they buy a new car, that is, if they were one of the lucky 250 each day that actually got the certificate and they manage to take delivery of their car by January 3rd. But is this enough to make you a fan of the brand? Is the rather small incentive worthwhile or energizing? Would it make you think highly of the brand and tell others about it?

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