I’ve gathered that Mark Burnett has made some sort of Bible miniseries for the History channel. I’ve gathered this because WalMart handed over their Twitter feed to the guy for a couple of hours tonight and he’s been proselytizing his butt off.
Okay, I get that Mr Burnett is obviously a very devout Christian and wants to share the good word. But why would WalMart go along with something like this? They’ll be selling the DVDs, so there’s good reason to promote the series, but is it really a good idea for the retailer to essentially flood its Twitter followers with religious spam? They’re being mocked pretty roundly and I have to think they’ve lost many followers. What’s the logic here?
It’s not like usually Walmart Twitter feed is filled with life-changing revelations anyways (looking at the last days messages: “Kickstart your day with mtn Dew kickstart”, “Retweet if you love shrimp”). Some poor marketing schlub has to fill that space every day, and letting Bernett plug his TV show is probably about as good as anything else. The History Channel might’ve paid for the advertising, or Walmart might’ve just figured stuff like that would attract people to its Twitter feed.
Well, yeah, it’s not as though the usual stuff is all that engaging or mind-blowing, but at least it was pretty neutral. This is bound to offend people. I guess I just don’t see how it’s a good idea for a big corporation to publicly take on a possibly controversial topic.
I wonder about people following any Brand, even if you love it. I adore Coke Zero but I ain’t gonna be following them on Twitter. Seems a bit weird if you ask me.