Back on December 16, Hyatt Gold Passport social media reps posted what Milepoint member jackplum perfectly described as:

a promotion of the new promotion or … a pre-announcement of the announcement

The gist of the post from they Hyatt reps was as follows:

Great news! A new Hyatt Gold Passport promotion – tailored just for you – will launch in January and we hope you’ll participate. Be sure to register for this new promotion beginning January 12, 2015 to learn what your exclusive offer is, and begin earning thousands of bonus points on stays through April 30, 2015. Check your inbox in January to learn more.

The pre-announcement was posted on both Milepoint and FlyerTalk, and the speculation about what this amazing personalized promotion might be ran rampant for, oh, about five minutes. At that point the buzz began to turn just a teensy bit negative.

Ignore these company paid hacks. Hyatt is too messed up to get their act together with the rest of the programs and launch their promotion on time. They want to tease us that they will have something semi competitive in mid January after we have all booked many of our stays. … I say show them the hand until they show us the goods. ~emike123

Somehow I get the feeling this is going to be a big stinking hunk of crap. ~antonius66

if you need to tease without providing any details it’s either very good or very bad. And the economy doesn’t warrant the first option. ~RTW1

Hyatt: It is a bad sign that the promotion has not been announced yet and your most valuable clients are already feeling shafted. ~thucanhho

What I wonder is, when they are having their meeting at Hyatt trying to decide how to announce this promotion, how do the meeting minutes read? My guess would be something like this:

Hyatt Social Media Director: Ok, we got the “big” Q1 promotion coming up and the boys upstairs say we have to generate buzz. They’re so goddamn smug about it too. “Why don’t you and your social media team go generate some buzz – bzzz, bzzz, bzzz – and let us worry about actually making money.” – jesus they piss me off. … Anyway, screw ’em, let’s brainstorm some ideas.

Hyatt Social Media lackey #1: How is the promo going to work and what’s it going to be called? Once we know those things we could probably develop some tease posts with just enough info to get people guessing about what will be included. People love to guess – especially frequent travelers.

SM Director: Great idea! I’ll just run upstairs and ask them to give me the promo details. Oh, wait, that’s right – THEY NEVER GIVE US THE DETAILS. “You’re on a need to know basis – and you need to know how to pull your head out of your butt. Now go post some more pics of your cats on Pinterest and quit bothering us.”. I swear, some day I’m really going to tell off that Flanders son-of-a-bitch…

SM lackey #2: Er, um, ok if they won’t give us the details now, maybe we should wait until we are able to get them before we post anything. Heck, not posting anything can sometimes be the best policy. If we stay silent until January, our longtime members will probably start posting guesses as to whether we are going to have a promo and what it might be. That will generate it’s own buzz.

SM Director: …and all of ’em with their greasy, slicked-back hair, and their MBAs. Yeah, that’s damn impressive. Thank god you turned down those offers from NASA and CERN to come work marketing for Hyatt. Aren’t we the lucky ones to have snagged you. Well I’ve got news for you Flanders, being an Excel spreadsheet guru isn’t the end-all-be-all of technological achievement it once was…

SM lackey #1: I think we’ve lost him.

SM Director: …It’s called the internet – been around for awhile now. Maybe you should pull your head out of your butt Flanders and see what it’s all about. Oh, that’s right, you still complain to your assistant every motherbleepin day that you can’t “get this emaily thing to work” and have her send faxes instead…

SM lackey #2: Yeah, he’s gone again. Why don’t we just do one of those pre-announcement announcements like we always do. No one around here is going to care or know any different anyway. We just gotta get through this and then in a couple of years we can get good jobs at a company that gets what it’s all about.

SM Director: …And another thing Flanders, it wasn’t called “MyFace” – and no one even uses it anymore. No, we aren’t just messaging to a bunch of pimple-faced kids sitting in their mommy’s basements. Newsflash, 99.9% of our customers have multiple social media accounts. Our department is the future. We’re just waiting for you and your dinosaur friends to retire. CHRIST! You make me so sick. If I ever catch you alone in the break room I’m gonna…

That’s how I imagine it anyway.

If you are a Hyatt member, what did you think about the new “Stay More Play More” promotion and how it was pre-announced?

Read the threads that inspired this ranty post in their entirety: Hyatt Gold Passport Promotion (Milepoint) and Hyatt Gold Passport Promotion (FlyerTalk)