Parodist Goes Big on BP Twitter Account

In less than a week a BP parody Twitter page has accumulated double the amount of fans the real BP Twitter account collected.

This article on Advertising Age shows how fast you can loose your Twitter exclusivity as a brand. The blog clearly written in a ironical and satirical way got people (and famous ones as well e.g. Micheal Moore) to re-tweet the funny statements and boosted the accounts popularity. Even tough BP is aware of the blog, they haven’s attempted to shut it down.

Toby Odone, a spokesman at BP, told Ad Age: “I’m not aware of whether BP has made any calls to have it taken down or addressed. People are entitled to their views on what we’re doing and we have to live with those. We are doing the best we can to deal with the current situation and to try to stop the oil from flowing and to then clean it up.”

Mr. Odone, who is not on Twitter himself, noted the company is aware of the feed. “People are frustrated at what’s happening, as are we, and that’s just their way of expressing it.”

Twitter is usually very fast in deleting impersonated profiles but it seems this profile is yet to survive. Additionally the Twitter account now also has an own blog and sells T-Shirts. All revenues generated will go to a fund to help clean the golf of Mexico.

A fun fact about the Twitter page is, that not everyone notices that its fake and post angry comments: One very-riled up California-based author, who tweets from @cmaconnell, wrote to @BPGlobalPR, “Sweet. Good to know money has corrupted your souls. Go ahead keep fu#king sh*t up for your children.”

Great idea.