In a post-Super Bowl campaign that went viral immediately, the insurance company said it would give away $1.5 million to someone who used its hashtag. Any tweet was eligible. And then came the garbage. Esurance is offering $1.5 million to someone who tweets a specific hashtag. But many are doing so alongside very offensive terms. (Credit: Screen shot by CNET) There's a million stories in the naked city, and all of them are using the hashtag #EsuranceSave30. And boy, are some of them offensive. Sunday night just after the Super Bowl ended, the insurance company Esurance announced a contest in which it would give away $1.5 million to one lucky Twitter user who included that hashtag in a tweet. The contest quickly went viral, making it (and Esurance) the biggest social media winner of the evening, and likely this year's Oreo. The hashtag was a reference to the fact that the contest was announced in the first commercial after the end of the Super Bowl, and that by waiting until the game was over, the cost of the ad was 30 percent less than it would have been during the game. "The Office" star John Krasinski set the whole thing off in the ad. Given some of the nasty tweets that were sent out, Krasinski and Esurance may rethink the way they framed the contest. The game was extremely simple: Use the hashtag #EsuranceSave30 in a tweet -- any tweet at all -- before 1 p.m. PT on Tuesday, and you're eligible to win. According to the a FAQ explaining the rules (PDF), "All you have to do is post or 'Tweet' on Twitter the following hashtag: #EsuranceSave30. That's it!" What's more, there are no limits to the number of times someone can tweet the hashtag, with each new tweet being its own entry. "You can enter as often as you want," Esurance wrote in the rules for the contest. "Just remember that each entry must be an individual tweet using the hashtag. With such a low barrier to entry, and the fact that players could create their own brand-new tweet with the hashtag, or simply retweet someone else's, the hashtag quickly trended worldwide, with thousands (or more) tweets that included the hashtag flooding Twitter's servers. Many were simply the hashtag itself. Others were pleas for the money. Still others were (sometimes) clever ways to incorporate the hashtag into something that, say, affected an air of being too cool to play a stupid Twitter hashtag game. For example, Twitter user @codytownsend tweeted, "Think I can carefully disguise a tweet about #EsuranceSave30 to make it seem like I'm not trying to win $1.5 million?" But there were also a very large number of tweets using the #EsuranceSave30 hashtag that linked it to any number of extremely offensive terms, or even attacked the insurance company itself. Think of the worst obscenity or racist taunt, and you can be sure someone tweeted it alongside the hashtag. According to the rules, those tweets may nevertheless be eligible to win the $1.5 million prize. Consider this gem, from @AdamWednesdays: "Every tweet with #EsuranceSave30 is an entry to win? Then let me use this tweet to say: Esurance was founded by Nazi war criminals." Or this one, from @MinnesotaMess: "Because getting someone rich and famous to sleep with you and then poking a hole in the condom is too much work. #EsuranceSave30." Are they actually eligible to win? While the rules state that "All you have to do is post or 'tweet' on Twitter the...hashtag: #EsuranceSave30," there is also a reference (in rule number 16) to what might be considered "inappropriate." As Esurance wrote in the rules, "Your Tweet will be considered inappropriate if it contains profanity or is in any way violent, disruptive, harassing, false, misleading, defamatory, abusive, racist, homophobic or sexist." Yet it's hard to say definitively that there's anything that declares that an inappropriate tweet would be disqualified. Not when the first rule says quite clearly that any tweet with the hashtag is eligible. Only in rule number 27 does Esurance state that the winner of the contest will have to go through a background check in order to "confirm that the unofficial winner and/or alternate is eligible to enter and potentially win and may also be used to determine if the unofficial winner and/or alternate has not participated in any behavior that is obnoxious, inappropriate, threatening, and illegal or that is intended to annoy, abuse, threaten or harass any other person and will reflect negatively on or embarrass the Sponsor's brand in planned media and publicity activities." Then again, whether a tweet is actually eligible to win or not is very much besides the point. This fine print is buried far down in the rules, and you can be sure very few people will ever read that language. Instead, people have been led to believe they can tweet whatever they want, and as long as they use the right hashtag, they might win $1.5 million. Most people played in the spirit Esurance wanted them to. Many others went straight for the gutter. And anyone watching the hashtag could see those ugly tweets go by. That begs the question: What did Esurance expect to happen here. Certainly, they expected -- and got -- thousands and thousands of people to play their game, tweeting their hashtag, and making their brand name a household name (for the time being at least). You can bet they will far more than recoup the cost of paying out the prize in new business. But did they know that people would be associating their game with the most lewd and offensive terms? Did they really want their company's name linked to words like Nazi, slanderous Obamacare attacks, blatantly racist epithets, swear words of every variety, and much more? It's hard to imagine they didn't foresee that happening, especially when the rules do, in fact, make reference to such behavior. CNET reached out to Esurance for comment, and will update this story when we hear back.
In a post-Super Bowl campaign that went viral immediately, the insurance company said it would give away $1.5 million to someone who used its hashtag. Any tweet was eligible. And then came the garbage.
Esurance is offering $1.5 million to someone who tweets a specific hashtag. But many are doing so alongside very offensive terms.
(Credit: Screen shot by CNET)
There's a million stories in the naked city, and all of them are using the hashtag #EsuranceSave30. And boy, are some of them offensive.
Sunday night just after the Super Bowl ended, the insurance company Esurance announced a contest in which it would give away $1.5 million to one lucky Twitter user who included that hashtag in a tweet. The contest quickly went viral, making it (and Esurance) the biggest social media winner of the evening, and likely this year's Oreo.
The hashtag was a reference to the fact that the contest was announced in the first commercial after the end of the Super Bowl, and that by waiting until the game was over, the cost of the ad was 30 percent less than it would have been during the game. "The Office" star John Krasinski set the whole thing off in the ad. Given some of the nasty tweets that were sent out, Krasinski and Esurance may rethink the way they framed the contest.
The game was extremely simple: Use the hashtag #EsuranceSave30 in a tweet -- any tweet at all -- before 1 p.m. PT on Tuesday, and you're eligible to win. According to the a FAQ explaining the rules (PDF), "All you have to do is post or 'Tweet' on Twitter the following hashtag: #EsuranceSave30. That's it!"
What's more, there are no limits to the number of times someone can tweet the hashtag, with each new tweet being its own entry. "You can enter as often as you want," Esurance wrote in the rules for the contest. "Just remember that each entry must be an individual tweet using the hashtag.
With such a low barrier to entry, and the fact that players could create their own brand-new tweet with the hashtag, or simply retweet someone else's, the hashtag quickly trended worldwide, with thousands (or more) tweets that included the hashtag flooding Twitter's servers.
Many were simply the hashtag itself. Others were pleas for the money. Still others were (sometimes) clever ways to incorporate the hashtag into something that, say, affected an air of being too cool to play a stupid Twitter hashtag game. For example, Twitter user @codytownsend tweeted, "Think I can carefully disguise a tweet about #EsuranceSave30 to make it seem like I'm not trying to win $1.5 million?"
But there were also a very large number of tweets using the #EsuranceSave30 hashtag that linked it to any number of extremely offensive terms, or even attacked the insurance company itself. Think of the worst obscenity or racist taunt, and you can be sure someone tweeted it alongside the hashtag. According to the rules, those tweets may nevertheless be eligible to win the $1.5 million prize. Consider this gem, from @AdamWednesdays: "Every tweet with #EsuranceSave30 is an entry to win? Then let me use this tweet to say: Esurance was founded by Nazi war criminals."
Or this one, from @MinnesotaMess: "Because getting someone rich and famous to sleep with you and then poking a hole in the condom is too much work. #EsuranceSave30."
Are they actually eligible to win? While the rules state that "All you have to do is post or 'tweet' on Twitter the...hashtag: #EsuranceSave30," there is also a reference (in rule number 16) to what might be considered "inappropriate." As Esurance wrote in the rules, "Your Tweet will be considered inappropriate if it contains profanity or is in any way violent, disruptive, harassing, false, misleading, defamatory, abusive, racist, homophobic or sexist."
Yet it's hard to say definitively that there's anything that declares that an inappropriate tweet would be disqualified. Not when the first rule says quite clearly that any tweet with the hashtag is eligible. Only in rule number 27 does Esurance state that the winner of the contest will have to go through a background check in order to "confirm that the unofficial winner and/or alternate is eligible to enter and potentially win and may also be used to determine if the unofficial winner and/or alternate has not participated in any behavior that is obnoxious, inappropriate, threatening, and illegal or that is intended to annoy, abuse, threaten or harass any other person and will reflect negatively on or embarrass the Sponsor's brand in planned media and publicity activities."
Then again, whether a tweet is actually eligible to win or not is very much besides the point. This fine print is buried far down in the rules, and you can be sure very few people will ever read that language. Instead, people have been led to believe they can tweet whatever they want, and as long as they use the right hashtag, they might win $1.5 million. Most people played in the spirit Esurance wanted them to. Many others went straight for the gutter. And anyone watching the hashtag could see those ugly tweets go by.
That begs the question: What did Esurance expect to happen here. Certainly, they expected -- and got -- thousands and thousands of people to play their game, tweeting their hashtag, and making their brand name a household name (for the time being at least). You can bet they will far more than recoup the cost of paying out the prize in new business.
But did they know that people would be associating their game with the most lewd and offensive terms? Did they really want their company's name linked to words like Nazi, slanderous Obamacare attacks, blatantly racist epithets, swear words of every variety, and much more? It's hard to imagine they didn't foresee that happening, especially when the rules do, in fact, make reference to such behavior.
CNET reached out to Esurance for comment, and will update this story when we hear back.
