Sponsored social media promotion of Chennai's pedestrian plaza goes awry

While people from as far as Agra commented, hardly any from Chennai tweeted about the new pedestrian plaza at T Nagar.
The stretch of Pedestrian Plaza at Pondy Bazar, T Nagar in Chennai. (Photo | EPS)
The stretch of Pedestrian Plaza at Pondy Bazar, T Nagar in Chennai. (Photo | EPS)

CHENNAI: "Very good place to relieve yourself when you feel tired from all day to evening (sic)," Tweets a user who, according to her Twitter profile, stays in Agra. One might think she is talking about the Taj Mahal, in her own backyard but she is, in fact, referring to Chennai's new Pedestrian Plaza at Pondy Bazar, built under the smart city project.

In a case of Twitter promotion gone awry, Chennai's pedestrian plaza, for a brief while on Saturday and Sunday, became an 'exciting' place to be for Twitter users from as far as Maharashtra, Uttar Pradesh and West Bengal.

Corporation officials admitted that most of these tweets were paid for to promote the newly constructed plaza in T Nagar. An official said that the plan was to create a buzz by sponsored tweets the first few days to publicise the hashtags and that they were looking to take things forward organically once that has been achieved.

Between 5 pm and 7 pm on Sunday, there have been 1,112 conversations on Twitter featuring #Plazatainment, a hashtag meant for users visiting the pedestrian plaza. The maximum number of these tweets (181) have come from Maharashtra. The remaining have been Tweeted by users in Uttar Pradesh, Tamil Nadu, Bihar and Rajasthan.

Most of these Tweets come with pictures of various performances on the plaza and several two-line versions of text on what a fun place the Plaza is. In fact, a user from Jaipur had tweeted that he would be 'surely' visiting the pedestrian plaza in Chennai and 'use the benefit of free automobile pavement' (sic).

However, following the two-hour period on Sunday, the graph of the number of tweets has fallen flat. For the same two hours on Saturday (between 5 pm and 7pm), around 657 conversations of the hashtag 'Theruvizha', also referring to the Pedestrian Plaza, were on Twitter although almost no tweets were found after that.

"Too much excited for the Pedestrian Plaza because here wonderful experience, (sic)" tweets a user sitting in Kolkata.

On the feedback for the plaza so far, the official said,"We knew that the response to the pedestrian plaza would be good but it has even exceeded our expectations. There are a lot of instances where senior citizens and children make use of the recreational spaces at the plaza." He added that they were also looking to conduct the Margazhi season festivities at the plaza.

On the amount spent on sponsored tweets so far, the official said that the exact numbers needed to be looked up and would be furnished once done.

The Pedestrian Plaza was officially inaugurated by Chief Minister 'Edappadi' K Palaniswami on November 13. It was constructed at a cost of Rs 39.86 crores and has seven play areas for children, clusters of seats under trees and planters have been set up. Provisions have been made underground for utilities including electrical, telecommunication and metro water lines.

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