PR Fail: MTV/BET Twitter ‘Hack’ Was a Promo Stunt
Twitter hacking is the big thing this week! After hackers turned Burger King into McDonald’s yesterday (and did their best to promote rappers T-Shyne and Chief Keef), the same team hijacked Jeep this morning and turned it into another joke-fest with tweets like this one, which we can only present to you in RT form:
RT @jeep: You’ll never catch @50cent ridin in a Dirty Ass @jeep !!!! #ForDaLuLz #FreeJeep
— PRNewser (@PRNewser) February 19, 2013
This afternoon, reports and tweets named MTV and BET as the latest victims of the hacker wave. One problem, though: they were faking it.

ON A SCALE OF 1 TO RATCHET, HOW MUCH BETTER ARE THE @bet AWARDS THAN THE VMAS??? #MTVHACK
— MTV (@MTV) February 19, 2013
We’re bringing JERSEY SHORE back!!! #MTVhack
— BET (@BET) February 19, 2013
Yes, the networks seemed to be sparring for an hour or two–and they switched background images just like Burger King and McDonald’s did yesterday. Then people remembered that Viacom owns both properties, noticed the shared hashtag and quickly realized that the #MTVHack was just a crossover promo stunt:
We totally Catfish-ed you guys. Thanks for playing! <3 you, @bet.
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— MTV (@MTV) February 19, 2013
See, we’re all about in-the-moment marketing and PR. But claiming that you’ve been hacked and then pulling a “made you look, ha ha” move? Lame. This move may have won each network a few more Twitter followers, but in this case they’re more like Poland Spring than Oreo: jumping on a meme rather than creating it themselves.
Oh, and for the record, we saw the Catfish movie. Fun film and all, but those guys were totally full of it.
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Nadine Cheung
Editor, The Job Post
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