(Blog Class Week 7)
For those living in a bubble on campus, #AskJPM was a promotional hashtag
launched by J. P. Morgan to provide college students an opportunity to
communicate directly with a senior executive in early November 2013. However,
upon its launch, the hashtag was immediately hijacked by Twitter users criticizing
and mocking the company for its alleged unethical business practices. For
example, on November 11th, Twitter users began asking humorous and critical
questions using the #AskJMP hashtag such as “Is
it true "JPM stands for "Just Pay More"? (and I’m being really
kind in sharing the Tweets!).
On November 13th, the
@jpmorgan Twitter feed announced that the Q&A session had been cancelled
and was a “bad idea.” In the first 48 hours, the Tweet received upwards of 1,400
retweets and 680 favorites. Subsequently,
Twitter users began using the #AskJPM hashtag with even more frequency.
According to the Twitter analytics site Topsy, Tweets containing the #AskJPM
hashtag peaked on November 13th with over 27,700 mentions!
Professor Kagan, can you puh-lease
invite the J.P. Morgan Digital Marketing team to speak in class next semester –
when discussing memes?! Dear god! For starters, a meme is "an idea,
behavior, or style that spreads from person to person within a culture."
Luckily, we covered “memes” in class recently so that I could immediately
identify it. Following the Tweet, the “#AskJPM” hashtag was quickly adopted and
evolved into a message and/or symbol carrying the present cultural idea that “banks
are greedy and unethical.” Going
forward, #AskJPM will forever be a comical joke amongst those in banking and “in
the know.” For more Tweets and Instagrams
from the time period, check out this website: http://www.oninstagram.com/askjpm. Websites such as this will ensure that J.P.
Morgan can never fully hide again from this decision – it’s a good thing that
J.P. Morgan is no longer alive, nor with any plans to run for President of the
United States! Remember:
There’s a reason that the S.E.C. forbids bankers' access to Facebook, Twitter, Instant Messaging and other
forms of communication – it’s really not for the protection of the public – it’s
for the protection of the bankers! #usecatsdonotaskquestions
No comments:
Post a Comment