In marketing, there are few things worse than almost getting it right.

If you’re a Denny’s denizen, you’ve probably ordered from a menu whose back cover invites you to “Join the conversation!” and directs you to its website, its Facebook page and its Twitter account. Impressive! Who knew Denny’s was so cutting edge?

Unfortunately, the Twitter address—twitter.com/dennys—belongs to a Taiwanese man named Dennys Hsieh. 

Filter Creative Group handles Denny’s social media initiatives, and they actually do a terrific job. Denny’s has a robust Facebook page with nearly 33,000 fans and two Twitter accounts: @DennysGrandSlam (for early birds) and @DennysAllnightr (for normal people). Both accounts have thousands of followers and do a good job of engagement, customer service and promotional marketing.

Mistakes happen. But it’s odd that such a “connected” company would ignore the error. The incorrect menus were distributed to 1,500 Denny’s locations last October and Matthew Petro called the error in November. Yet Denny’s hasn’t so much as put an explanatory note next to the Twitter link on their website.

It looks like their mistake might cost them. 

Twitter has a policy that after six months of inactivity an account may be deemed inactive and released to another party. Dennys Hsieh stopped posting updates last July and Denny’s has now petitioned Twitter to have the account reassigned to them. Dennys Hsieh then began posting again on February 19^th, including a link to CNET’s excellent report on the same date.

If only someone had fact-checked the menu. You don’t need your spidey senses to detect the brewing soap opera that’s bound to keep Twittizens entertained in coming weeks.

Ciao for now!

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Let's Twitter: @WanderNot