They say that all publicity is good publicity. But does the age-old adage still ring true in today’s consumer landscape?

Recently, I heard about a new partnership between two giants of their respective industries – Westpac and Airbnb. The pair have developed a campaign where consumers can utilise Airbnb’s listings to find a spare room for guests to stay in while they visit you. Westpac get to promote their home loan packages, while Airbnb attracts new customers who are searching for spare rooms that their guests can stay in.

While this partnership sounds all well and good; the way the two introduced the concept was woeful at best. In what has been described as “Twitter’s lamest brand moment of 2015”, the two companies started a ‘spontaneous’ collaboration through the oft-misused social media platform.

It started with a tweet from Westpac about having your parents annoyingly visit you the second you’ve just moved out into your first home (it gets worse).

Airbnb then jumped in to sympathise with the situation, and before you know it Westpac had come up with the genius idea of how Airbnb could provide first homebuyers with a ‘spare, spare room’ when they need it.

Twitter users were not at all happy with just how blatantly scripted this ‘natural’ conversation was. They were however, very happy to let the two companies know just how unoriginal they had been in trying to appeal to consumers through the not-so-spontaneous social media collaboration. Here’s some of the choicer ones now:

Which brings me back to my original question. As I was reading about all the backlash, I thought to myself, “despite how badly the marketing strategy was executed, it’s got everybody talking about the initiative right? Isn’t it a win in the end? Isn’t any publicity good publicity?”

I believe the short answer is no. Customers have the power in today’s consumer landscape. They are now smarter, better equipped and more informed as they interact with brands. Getting ‘views’ and being talked about simply isn’t enough, companies need to truly engage and deeply connect with consumers in a meaningful way that breaks the norm, and cuts through the noise.

BrandHook’s podcast, Closing The Gap, has touched on many ways that marketers can better understand this dissonance between companies and consumers in the marketplace today. There is a range of innovative strategies and approaches that the above stunt Westpac and Airbnb pulled definitely doesn’t fall into.

Tapping into a customer insight is one thing, but the context, and execution is just as crucial. If you want to find out more, give us a call.

Written by James