RIM's Bold Heroes campaign faces Twitter thrashing

Research in Motion has come into a bit of Twitter trouble with their Bold campaign. The campaign started towards the end of last year, where RIM asked Twitter users to state their "Bold New Years' Resolutions" adding the #BeBold hashtags to their tweets. They even advertised to users to do this on the Times Square billboard on New Years' Eve. According to Mashable, RIM claimed that they received more than 35,000 'appropriate' responses to their billboard ad. RIM then released an infographic to relay the different types of New Year's Resolution responses they received and as a bonus, added superheroes to the infographic. Each superhero represented a particular 'class' of resolutions.

The Infographic: Click to expand

The Bold superheroes, or the Bold Team were made up of 4 superheroes. There was GoGo Girl or The Achiever, Max Stone or the Adventurer, Justin Steele or The Advocate and Trudy Foreal or The Authentic. GoGo Girl resolutions included doing something different and achieving goals. Max Stone resolutions included sticking up for oneself and seizing the day. Justin Steele resolutions included connecting with others more and making a difference in the world. Finally, Trudy Foreal resolutions included speaking up for what one believes in and being real.

RIM received a lot of criticism for this campaign on Twitter, being called names like, "dumb, foolish, stupid, silly, vacuous, and/or downright moronic." RIM responded to the criticism saying, "We've noticed The BeBold Team has received a lot of attention over the last couple of days, and wanted to clarify – this infographic is just intended to be a bit of fun. "

This criticism is significant of a seemingly new movement on Twitter called #BashTagging. A similar case of #BashTagging was seen with McDonald's only a few days ago where their Twitter campaign for promoting user and supplier stories backfired. Their hashtag #McDStories turned into a forum for customers to comment on negative experiences at the restaurant. Eventually, McDonald's changed their campaign to #LittleThings.