Words Go Further

Twitter spam from motelrocks - how not to do social media marketing

So last week I got tweeted by someone called fashionlover090.

“I used to love asos! Have you discovered Motelrocks yet? They have 20% off with code: xxxx. Check it out!!!”

Thanks!!!

I hadn’t discovered MotelRocks; what a thoughtful suggestion from… erm, who are you?

No shock to see that fashionlover090 is a spammer targeting twitter followers of rival (and much larger) fashion retailer ASOS. Regardless of whether this is an automated script or worse, a naive copy & pasting intern, it’s pretty pathetic. Couldn’t they at least personalise the spam? Or have a few variations on the theme?

Although I’ve got to hand it to them, 229 updates in one day is impressive.

Who thought this was a good idea? Presumably Motelrocks are paying an agency for a ‘Twitter outreach campaign’ or a ’social media engagement programme’. Something which sounds fancy but is boiled down, in this case, to Twitter spam.

I particularly like the “I used to like ASOS” line. A subtle suggestion that the competition is past it.

It’s work like this which shows how old dogs can’t always learn new tricks. It’s like taking email campaign thinking and applying it to a social platform. Send out one message to as many people as possible. Some of it will stick, won’t it?

Tags: marketing, socialmedia, spam, twitter