Big Bazaar sets an example with #CheckBeforeSharing

Photoshop can be a double edged sword; a camouflaged pawn for the social media wreckers or a creative ladder for expressions. Unfortunately, social media has been vulnerable to way too many instances, when Adobe’s design marvel was misused.

Miscreants have been using photo editors for all sorts of rumours – right from misquoting Vladimir Putin to morphing an image of a Sikh youth holding a Quran while sporting a vest with explosives.

Yet, another instance of ill-use of image editors came into light when pictures of a Big Bazaar ad in Times of India was photoshop-ed, converting its text into an infamous Hindi cuss word.

The image instantly went viral; mainly due to the constant controversies that Times of India has been embroiled in due to it’s overtly sold out front page ads. This particular instance, however, also tarnished the brand’s image as well at a number of levels.

Judicious use of social media

Unlike other brands who stir away from trolls and memes, Big Bazaar resolved to bring the issue of careless sharing of unauthenticated images and facts to light post this issue. The brand initiated #CheckBeforeSharing – sharing the original advertorial with the compromised one.

Twitterati soon picked up Big Bazaar’s post and started conversing about how the socialverse needs to be more responsible and informed before sharing any piece of information.

The hashtag got trending in mere 13 minutes of its launch and continued to hold tweeples attention for 3 hours. #CheckBeforeSharing trended regionally Kolkata, Chennai, Bangalore, Thane, and Mumbai.

Garnering more than 4200 tweets from 1090+ contributors the campaign created a reach of 4.15 million and achieved 32.2 million timeline deliveries.

Points like verification of content and fact checking came to the fore in the conversation. Users also went ahead and lauded Big Bazaar for their pro-active approach and sense of social responsibility towards their consumers. Users managed to create almost 4, 246 posts sharing their opinion.

A single tweet, helped Big Bazaar bring forth a number of social media evils, while creating a sense of awareness.