LONDON: Negative tweets can prove beneficial to a brand by driving "a lot of interest,” according to Simon Wallis, marketing director of Domino's Pizza in the UK.
Wallis was speaking about Domino's sponsorship of Splash, Olympic diver Tom Daley's much-derided ITV show, which aired in January.
The show suffered a Twitter backlash with tweets attacking ITV for "plumbing new depths" and "scraping the barrel" in broadcasting the show. It was fronted by the 18-year-old Olympic diver Daley, who served as a diving mentor to celebrities.
But Wallis argued the coverage was a positive for Domino's.
“You would rather have people talking about it than not,” he said. “Twitter comments help drive a lot of interest in the brand.”
Wallis said the negative tweets "didn't reflect badly on Domino's Pizza” as a sponsor because “it was detached” from the negative comments about the show.
It is understood that Domino's is looking to sponsor the next season of Splash.
Wallis pointed to the viewing figures for the show, which were widely seen as successful. An average of 5.6 million viewers in the UK turned in to see former ski-jumper Eddie "The Eagle" Edwards win the final competition.
This story originally appeared on the website of Marketing, the sister publication of PRWeek at Haymarket Media.
