‘Look at that!’ Steve passed his phone across
to Johnny and took a mouthful of ale while his friend read the tweet that was
displayed.
‘That’s nice Johnny said, knowing full well
that whatever Steve had in mind it was not that this was a quaint bit of
Christmas goodwill.
‘No, it’s not,’ said Steve true to form. ‘It’s
not nice, it’s incredibly cynical.’
‘Oh I’ve missed you,’ Johnny said with a smile.
‘Look at it, they are saying that they respond
to their customer’s tweets but bullshit they do, this is just clever social
media advertising.’
‘But they still put the hat on the building, it
makes it Christmassy.’ Johnny wondered why he was arguing; he knew Steve would
have a comeback.
‘Yeah but it just so happens this customer they
are responding to isn’t an ordinary member of Joe or Jane public but is a journalist for a
northern radio station. I bet if you or me asked them to put a hat on a store
they wouldn’t do it. Hashtag make
Christmas my arse, it should read hashtag make money, hashtag maximum free
publicity. There should be rules about this.’
Johnny rolled his eyes, how could his friend
get so upset about such a minor thing.
‘You know I don’t know what’s worse, their
cynical marketing ploy or the fact that there are 831 retweets. That suggests
that people have fallen for this. Look at the comments, loved this, impressive, we want one in Tiverton. How gullible are
these people? Why can’t they see through the hashtag marketing scam.’
Johnny really hoped this habit of prefixing
everything with hashtag would not be long lasting.
‘And what makes it worse,’ Steve went on, ‘is that they deleted my tweet questioning their motives.'
‘Maybe Steve,’ Johnny took a deep breath, ‘hashtag
bah humbug. Maybe people don’t want to see through it, they want to believe in
a little bit of Christmas magic to cheer up their lives.'
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