“How I Met Your Mother” prevented an awful use of social media in giving fans a spoiler look at who the mother is prior to the start of Monday’s show. The producers forgot that the best use of platforms is as a call to action.
In short, the people who put together the plan just threw up a hashtag and slapped the mothers photo on the “How I Met Your Mother” Facebook page without a thought, pissing off fans in the process, as the video shows. (And the mother is the cute Cristin Milioti.)
Thus, what could have been a cool example of the use of social media wound up being a lost cause.
What they should have done was offered a prize to the first person to tune in and send a tweet with the hashtag #isawyourmon and with a photo of them actually watching the show, posted with the tweet.
If the producers were concerned about leaving out the West Coast, just have one part of the contest “time localized” so that there was the same contest for anyone sending a tweet of the same type after the show started on the West Coast.
So, you have, say, two winners of tickets to the 2014 Super Bowl, but the bottom line would be participation and a lot of social media chatter.
Stay tuned.