The $1,000 Promoted Tweet That Complained About @British

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What would you do if an airline lost your luggage? Complain to a manager? Send them an angry email? Take it to Twitter?

Well, the latter is exactly what one disgruntled flyer did. But when he didn’t get the response that he wanted, he took the matter to a whole other level.

“@British_Airways is the worst airline ever. Lost my luggage & can’t even track it down. Absolutely pathetic #britishairways,” wrote Twitter user @HVSVN on Monday, adding, “Thanks for ruining my EU business trip #britishairways. I shouldn’t have flown @BritishAirways @British_Airways. Never flying with you again.”

When his tweets didn’t get any response from BA, @HVSVN stepped up his game, writing this promoted tweet, which he circulated to @BritishAirways’ 300,000 or so, followers.

“Yes. I’m promoting my tweets to all BA followers since their Customer Service is horrendous,” added @HVSVN. “It’s not about the money at this point. I’m going to run promoted ads until BA fixes this mess.”

Eventually – albeit 24 hours later – BA did get in touch, but their response, which showed a distinct lack of social savvy, didn’t exactly clear the matter.

@HVSVN kept running his ad, and BA made an official statement. “We would like to apologise to the customer for the inconvenience caused. We have been in contact with the customer and the bag is due to be delivered today.”

“I got what I wanted. I win.” said @HVSVN in his latest tweet. And the cost? $1,000, which generated some pretty sweet ROI.

18.7 percent engagement rate? It would be a remiss of Twitter to include this in future promotional material, but if any single event served to highlight the potential of their ad platform, this was it.

This article was originally published on MediaBistro (British Airways image via Shutterstock.)