A Bold, Yet Brilliant, Move By J.C. Penney

During the Super Bowl on Sunday night, J.C. Penney released several tweets with spelling and grammatical errors, leading many to believe that the person controlling the account was drunk.

Other brands hopped on J.C. Penney’s tweets as a chance to promote their own brand, such as KIA and Snickers. 

Many are still unsure as to whether the original tweets were planned, or just a sign of incompetence, but in my opinion the strategy was brilliant. These two tweets earned more than 41,000 retweets during the Super Bowl, and have generated a social media buzz unlike anything J.C. Penney has ever seen. As a comparison, the number of retweets on the J.C. Penney account the week before the game averaged only 20 per tweet. 

J.C. Penney has been on a downward slope, announcing last month that it planned to close 33 stores and eliminate 2,000 jobs in order to save $65 million a year. Stock prices have fallen 71% in the past twelve months. Now more than ever J.C. Penney needs to regain market share and increase sales. 

These tweets were a bold move, and J.C. Penney needs to strike again while the iron is hot to ensure success. Tweeting more poorly typed messages isn’t going to cut it here. Those were interesting and unexpected, a one-time novelty if you will, and following them up with other sloppy tweets would kill the appeal. J.C. Penney needs to take the time to engage with its customers, and share quality content while they still have the spotlight. Many consumers may think their stunt was funny and follow them, but unless they manage to convert these potential customers into sales, their tweets were a waste of time. 

Their final tweet of the sloppily typed saga explained that they had been typing with mittens. It was somewhat of a letdown, after expecting a funny story or further excitement from the brand. A better move in my opinion would’ve been something along the lines of “Oops it seems we had a little too much fun last night. Here’s your chance to have some fun too with a 15% off coupon”. A move like that provides a humorous ending to the story, and gives consumers a call to action that could increase sales in stores. Regardless, we’ll see if their marketing strategy pays off in the upcoming quarter.