logo

Aunty loves GAP.

Posted on November 23, 2007 by Tim
Filed Under Technology |

It wasn’t long ago that email systems administrators would be kindly advising their colleagues not to simply forward on the latest virus warning to thousands of their contacts in the hope of being their saviour, certainly without validating it first.

Most of course were a hoax, typically triggered by some bored kid wanting to make an impact on global bandwidth and disk space rather than consume more porn.

Then, the marketing departments caught wind of the viral email effect and have very sucessfully tapped in to the high number of ’suckers’ (I’ll refrain myself here) who forward on leaked offers to their thousand of mates - a percentage of whom are also suckers. Accidental discounts; bugs in websites; secret logins : all of which usually mean vastly discounted products for sale….in theory.

Now then, that’s not to say it never happens.  E-commerce systems go wrong frequently and there are of course genuine discount offers out there; but the merchant is rarely in a legal position where they have to honour the thousands of orders for plasma screens priced at 2p.  Of course not, the Sales of Goods Act or whatever legislation ‘common sense’ hides behind covers them more than adequately.

Which is why it’s disappointing when major brands continue to pull this stunt and the media promote it further without thinking it through.  Not for the first time,  GAP has ‘leaked’ out an offer to the internet - this time apparantly offering 60% discount if a user presents a print out of the PDF attachment at the till.  The story goes that it was created by a disgruntled employee.  Yeah, sure. 

GAP of course then become the hero by stating that they’ll provide a (reduced) discount anyway to anyone who presents the voucher.  Seemingly the marketing department weren’t satisfied with the uptake of the 30% offer they had authorised so they thought they’d spin it.  More people in store = more purchases that perhaps would never have happened = more money.

All very clever perhaps, however it really didn’t need to be item number four in this morning’s Breakfast News on BBC stating how GAP had been the victim, did it ?  How much more exposure can one viral campaign need, without the leading morning news TV channel covering the story ?

Of course, within a year we’ll all be getting so many offers that most will be ignored, legit or not, thankfully like those virus hoax emails.   Plus of course the follow-on brands (with second rate marketing departments?) will try the same stunt, so we’ll be getting 500 Creme Eggs for the price of 10 at Woolworth offers…or something.    

Next viral idea anyone ?

Comments

Leave a Reply