Southern is asking passengers to complain about RMT strikes and they’re not happy about it

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The reaction to a large advertising campaign Southern Rail took out today suggests it may well have misjudged its audience.

The snappily named “Let’s strike back” campaign implored passengers to tweet the RMT union and tell it how rail strikes made them feel. It also suggested a hashtag for users to get involved with: #SouthernBackonTrack.

Twitter users duly used the hashtag and got it trending, but not quite for the purposes Southern had envisaged.

Read more: #SouthernBackOnTrack: Govia offers conductors £2,000 to avoid more strikes

Some did reach out to RMT…

While another popular suggestion to get #SouthernBackOnTrack involved a different plan altogether:

Others took the campaign much more seriously:

https://twitter.com/SimonXIX/status/782873179652063232

… and took the chance to air some grievances – quite a lot of them in fact:

https://twitter.com/Mr_Ogrizovic/status/782842109950828544

https://twitter.com/Mr_Ogrizovic/status/782841488292151296

What the majority of Twitter users did agree on was that the campaign was a huge PR fail:

https://twitter.com/Chris_Webb1/status/782876160678043648

One user spared a thought for the poor souls manning Southern’s social accounts:

https://twitter.com/Peter_Lote/status/782878343188414464

While one Twitter user simply pointed out the force wasn’t strong with Southern today: