Comments for Furniture Store Habitat Caught Exploiting Iran Via Twitter

Furniture Store Habitat Caught Exploiting Iran Via Twitter

2009-06-24T22:12:42Z

BBC News reports that the furniture chain Habitat is very, very sorry for using keywords such as "Iran" and "Mousavi" to drive sales via Twitter. The tweets were posted last week and have since been removed, but in case you missed the poetry of this particular brand of badvertising, here's one sample: #MOUSAVI Join the database for free to win a �1,000 gift card!

Wait. How sorry was that?

The business said it was "totally against" its communications strategy, that it had removed the content and would ensure it did not happen again.

Now if you'll excuse us we need to go promote our new book. #Wimbledon #Nena #shameless

"Habitat sorry for Iran Tweeting" [BBC News] (Thanks, Charles Star!)

Guest Bloggers Carrie McLaren & Jason Torchinsky are coeditors of Ad Nauseam: A Survivor's Guide to American Consumer Culture. In previous lives, they worked together on the hopelessly obscure and now defunct Stay Free! magazine.

Comment from unobservant on 2009-06-25

2009-06-25T20:20:29Z

Has "99 Luftballons" become socially relevant again?

Comment from golddog on 2009-06-25

2009-06-25T10:14:14Z

Did you mean #Neda?

Comment from Trai_Dep on 2009-06-24

2009-06-25T01:49:44Z

And thus the last straw appears on the camel's soon-to-be-broken back.
Short of locking down the tags to authorized posters (sort of destroying the premise?), this seems to be a terminal problem.
Beyond the ADD aspects of the whole scheme (in my mind, but hey, 1,000 flowers blooming)

Comment from ElizabethD on 2009-06-24

2009-06-25T01:40:01Z

I knew Twitter would develop a robust Dark Side sooner or later.

Don't Twitter myself or follow any friends' Twitters. Sole exception is my alma mater's Twitters which I follow via emails and are not so frequent as to be annoying.

Comment from Edge101 on 2009-06-24

2009-06-25T00:24:01Z

This reminds me of the first time spam appeared in the newsgroups so long ago. There was an uproar and then it became commonplace. At least someone is trying to figure out how to make money with Twitter.

Adam
[www.twitterbacklash.com]

Comment from P_Smith on 2009-06-24

2009-06-25T00:22:47Z

The media aren't exactly in the position to be "appalled". I can't find links to verify this, but I recall that several media conglomerates (the BBC, CNN or perhaps other) have been caught sending out memos to corporations telling them to "buy advertising time for the next disaster". The media are encouraging companies to pay ahead of time so when another disaster occurs - a terrorist bombing, plane crash, war or whatever - the companies who buy will get prime advertising time during the "reporting".

If anyone knows of such memos or reports leaking out, please post them. Such bloodthirsty advertising is revolting.

Comment from bagumpity on 2009-06-24

2009-06-25T00:01:43Z

I checked out their store in Glendale, CA a while back. Frankly, I wasn't impressed by their stock or prices so it's not like their twitterizing made me any less likely to shop their. My hunch is that all they did was drive up the number of people walking in then walking back out in five minutes muttering "meh" under their breath.

Comment from hi on 2009-06-24

2009-06-24T23:44:44Z

Here's a shocker: Twitter: (Tweet) sing like a bird: (simile) to divulge secrets with little coercion

Comment from ThinkerTDM on 2009-06-24

2009-06-24T23:31:53Z

I don't know what's worse, people FINALLY realizing twitter can be used for advertising using popular keywords, or twitter fans thinking it never would.

Comment from ludwigk on 2009-06-24

2009-06-24T23:28:04Z

@Benguin: Spwitter?

Comment from Jesse on 2009-06-24

2009-06-24T23:16:43Z

It makes me mad when random people follow you because of keywords in your updates.

Comment from kathyl on 2009-06-24

2009-06-24T23:15:17Z

It is simply impossible for lists of popular topics to remain pristine where the web is concerned. There's the age-old (well, web age-old) practice of stuffing popular search terms into the html code for your website using the various tactics that have been utilized ever since the first search engines popped into existence, and now there is hashtag abuse on Twitter.

Like dragonfire81 alluded to above, this stuff really won't stop unless the businesses who employ these tactics begin to see a negative reaction in their bottom line instead of a positive one. If you don't like this kind of stuff, then your mission is to avert your eyes from this sort of attention-getting method and also keep a mental list of places you won't shop. That's really the only way to make your preference known, because it's the only thing the people doing it care about.

Comment from Anonymous on 2009-06-24

2009-06-24T23:10:59Z

This is bad, but far from the worst examples I've seen while following the Iran protests. The worst would have to be the people who say something about Mousavi or freedom, then a tinyurl, then #iranelection or #gr88. You click on the tinyurl expecting a pic or news story and BAM. Goatse'd. Incidentally, a blogspot account called twitspam is tracking spammers/Goatse/deliverers of misinformation. Perhaps Habitat should be added to their list.

Comment from FlashbackX01 on 2009-06-24

2009-06-24T23:06:36Z

It's a savings revolution! For the greater glory of money.

Comment from josephbloseph on 2009-06-24

2009-06-24T23:05:11Z

Well, what this appears to be is that the advertising model used updates ads to appear in search topics for highly searched words. This is a sound strategy in that it does promote the website in terms of appearing in search results, but as it does not take into account the subject matter of those words (other than excluding a list of offensive terms, which in all likelihood are consistent top performers in searches.) I think this is more interesting in that it is an example of an algorithm and advertising design flaw, and not because it is somehow innately outrageous or offensive.

Comment from MostlyHarmless on 2009-06-24

2009-06-24T23:03:09Z

No offense, but "stayfree" in the article title almost looks spammish :P

I totally support the cause, but I have apparently laughed at too many spam/scam emails in my day and now I cant look at it without giggling.

Comment from Benguin on 2009-06-24

2009-06-24T23:00:07Z

I've been seeing this practice more and more lately. It seems I can't search the top trending topics anymore without half the results being spammers just tacking the hash tags to the end of their ads.

Comment from chiieddy on 2009-06-24

2009-06-24T22:59:35Z

@dragonfire81: There is bad publicity. There's the ethics 'Front Page of the NY Times' rule too. Don't do it if you wouldn't want to see it on the front page of the NY Times. Companies never cease to fail there (AIG, Lehman, Comcast, Habitat)

Comment from Damocles57 on 2009-06-24

2009-06-24T22:56:38Z

From the BBC article:

"The top ten trending topics were pasted into hashtags without checking with us and apparently without verifying what all of the tags referred to."

It seems the underlying issue as commented in the BBC story is the practice of using trending topics without reviewing the terms. Probably automating and running some routine to harvest terms and insert in comments to drive business.

I find this practice worse than the two specific words highlighted in this article.

Comment from dragonfire81 on 2009-06-24

2009-06-24T22:42:46Z

I wonder if this will be a major test of the old "there's no such thing as bad publicity" rule?

Comment from AllToAll,ByMyMustard!_GitEmSteveDave on 2009-06-24

2009-06-24T22:37:44Z

While I support the whole Twitter thing, it got to be overload to the point where one of the people whom I follow, I wanted to unfollow until it blew over b/c I would get 20 tweets in a row, and would over fill my feed.