Lidl Hashtag Campaign Increases Luxe Dinner Promise From 1,000 to 10,000

Lidl (@lidl), a discount retailer based in Germany, initiated a Twitter hashtag campaign in Belgium on December 17, 2012 with the goal of reaching out to a wider market. However, the move might lead to more liabilities than benefits. The supermarket cited that it will give out five Christmas dinners comprised of four courses to food banks for every tweet that appears with the hashtag #luxevooriedereen. The hashtag means ?luxury for everyone? in Dutch. Each dinner pack will cost the company about ?20 and Lidl expected to give out around 1,000 dinner packs in all. The campaign ran only for 24 hours but by the end of the day, there were 1,500 tweets already. Much of the publicity can be contributed to local newspapers announcing the offer. Here's the hashtag's activity, garneing more than 1,000 tweets at its peak. To-date, the supermarket has to give out 7,500 dinners, which includes tomato soup, chocolates, vol-au-vents with chips and an ice-cream cake. Lidl, instead of confirming that the viral spread turned out to be a big loss for them, rounded up the dinners to 10,000 and tagged the free dinner campaign a huge success. According to a spokesman from the company, they learned several lessons in just two days of running the campaign. The campaign was supposed to run from December 17 until Christmas Eve. The sudden stoppage can be contributed to the fast-growing number of tweets which the company describes as an ?overwhelming success?. Pieterrjan Rynwalt of Lidl shared that the group is very happy with the results and will donate 10,000 meals instead, costing around ?200,000. There is no news yet if the discount retailer will be hosting the same campaign in 2013. This is just one of many similar circumstances wherein companies paid more than what they initially expected due to a viral campaign spread. Whether the marketing effects were expected or not, those who will receive free meals will no doubt have a joyful Christmas this year.