What happens when a major brand name accidentally uses your Twitter handle on one of their contest flyers?
If you're Wendy Peters of Calgary, you shrug, hand over your account for 90 days and have a good laugh about it.
Peters, a keen tweeter and social media enthusiast, recently found herself on the receiving end of a phone call from fast-food chain Wendy's, after they realized they had distributed thousands of contest flyers with the wrong Twitter handle.
You see, Peters has had her hands on the name @Wendy since 2008 - more than a year before the burger chain even set up their account, @Wendys.
But the U.S. company mistakenly failed to copy read the flyer for their flatbread chicken sandwich promotion in March, and sent a flyer with a misplaced apostrophe, asking people to "Tweet the photo @Wendy's using #twEATfor1K."
Photo of the contest flyer, via Wendy's. Story continues below.
On March 20, Peters woke up to a tweet from Wendy's. Her first thought? "Uh oh, am I in trouble for all the tweets I've been replying to?"
Peters admits there has been confusion between the accounts in the past and she's sometimes replied to people's complaints and compliments about the food - but insists she was always kind when pointing out the mistake.
But this was an entirely different beast.
The company asked Peters if she would mind turning over her account for the duration of the contest, on account of their misplaced apostrophe. They feared she would be inundated with pictures of people's sandwiches and they also wanted to add a message to her account guiding people to the right place.
"We'd like to talk to you about coming to a compromise with your Twitter account," Peters recalls them saying.
Peters said she's ok with the mistake and that handing over her account wasn't the end of the world.
"I just asked that they not tweet from it," she said, adding the company reskinned the background and added a company logo avatar.
And it worked out for the best. Peters was compensated for her sacrifice with some coupons and gift cards (which she's sharing with friends) while Wendy's promotion was successful.
"There were streams and streams and streams of people tweeting at Wendy's with an apostrophe 's'," said Peters.
"I'm kind of glad I wasn't around for that."
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