Desigual recently asked its customers to invade blogs with "happy" messages - in the manner of a flashmob. Bloggers see their posts invaded with "positive" comments - thanking them, praising them:
"Thank you, Mathias Riquier, for this nice message! A bit of poetry and good humour does no harm in this world of brutes and bricks...".
"I look forward to your next post, after which I will return to your blog, discovered by chance I admit :-)"
This marketing campaign has three characteristics:
- The blogs in question were chosen by the brand;
- Customers participating in this operation do not present themselves as Desigual spokespersons;
- The first 100 authors of comments that Bloggers respond to are likely to win clothes ... and others get a 20% discount on desigual.com
Contrary to what some commentators say, I think this is something to be appalled about.
Desigual lacks ethics: the brand transforms its customers into "brainless" opportunists AND rewards them for it. We see here the antithesis of the netiquette that calls for transparency: the comments left on a blog should be identifiable when they are "staged" in this way by a brand. Yes, bloggers are far from happy to see a multitude of comments on their posts. Desigual has mistaken its epoch and proves that it understands nothing about social media:
- It launches a typical consumerism operation ("Do this and you will win that");
- It adopts an attitude that is rather condescending towards bloggers ("those poor bloggers who receive such few comments...")
- It is not included in a dialogue with users.
- It takes internet codes (music, graphics, themes) to promote a cause and then twists them to an operation that has no real value.
