JPMorgan Chase Cancels Twitter Q&A as 'Bad Idea'

Nov. 14, 2013 — -- Like many other companies JPMorgan Chase was trying a newfangled thing called Twitter to engage customers and leverage the bank's brand. But like McDonald's and other companies before it, the bank was unprepared for the unpredictable and downright nasty response from cyberspace.

After JPMorgan announced vice chairman and veteran investment banker James "Jimmy" Lee was going to be available to answer questions via the hashtag #AskJPM, Twitter users harangued the firm's Twitter account.

The response was simliar to a Twitter campaign by McDonald's that asked users to share their favorite memories of the burger chain. The innocent request backfired when users took over the chain's hashtag to tell horror stories of alleged bad food and service.

There were 18,669 tweets with #AskJPM within 24 hours on Wednesday, and more than 6,000 on Thursday. There were more than 30,000 tweets with #mcdstories when the fast food company hosted its one-day campaign in January of 2012.

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While some of the tweets were standard questions related to the bank's business, others were highly critical of the firm's ethics.

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JPMorgan admitted the campaign was a "bad idea" and decided to cancel the Q&A, scheduled to take place this afternoon.