If you were to go visit the @camryeffect Twitter account right now, this is what you'd most likely see.
Why is this significant?
Because about an hour ago, if you went to the @camryeffect Twitter account, this is what you would have seen:
Yup, you could have scrolled through hundreds of similar-sounding tweets that @camryeffect was sending to people who mentioned any Super Bowl-related topic. And there were a bunch of other Twitter accounts - @camryeffect1, @camryeffect2, @camryeffect3, etc. - that were doing the same thing.
Unfortunately for Toyota and its advertising agency Saatchi & Saatchi, this did not meet with a warm response. Drew Olanoff of The Next Web wrote about it. Steven Hodson of the Inquisitr wrote about it. John Bredehoft of Empoprises (that's me) wrote about it. And a bunch of people are tweeting about it.
So for those who believe in the power of social media to change the world, what did the negative reaction do?
Well, the accounts haven't been closed down. And as Steven Hodson and Kristi Colvin have noted, they probably won't be.
And so far, Toyota and Saatchi & Saatchi haven't apologized, as far as I know.
All that they've done is hide the evidence. Sort of - the screen captures that Hodson and I made show what they were doing, and certain Twitter searches will show the tweets that they sent, such as this one from @CamryEffect5:
@Andre_B87 We're excited for Sunday's commercials too! Shazam ours or enter online for a chance to win a Camry: bz.lo.cr/I2D
And you can't see the two (only two) people that @camryeffect follows any more, but as I previously noted, one of those two people happens to be an employee of Saatchi & Saatchi. No idea whether this person is connected with the Twitter campaign, or with any part of the campaign, but I'm monitoring his account to see if he says anything about the spam. So far he's said nothing.
