When Twitter Promotions Go Wrong: IL Pizzeria Offers Food For Flashing
from the just-gtfo dept
By now you should be familiar with the concept of advertising being content and content being advertising. If you're new to the class, the idea is that clever, timely, and wanted ads can be every bit as entertaining and drawing as entertainment content itself. It's essentially what makes a good ad: something you want being presented in the way you want it, all without pissing you or a large section of the customer off base. Oreo serves as a wonderful example of this, having put out a timely Twitter quip as an ad in last year's Super Bowl.
But make no mistake, you can do this wrong. And one pizzeria in Champaign, IL, home of the University of Illinois, got it horribly, horribly wrong.
If you're a female customer who goes to Drew's Pizzeria in Champaign, you can apparently flash your boobs and walk away with some free pizza. Since sober girls usually won't flash people for free pizza, it seems that these boobs-for-pizza trades unsurprisingly happen more often at night, according to a Craigslist post.Drew's Pizzeria's Twitter account, now deleted in an attempt to bury its head in the internet sand, offered such wonderful incentives to eat their pie as:
"FREE PIZZA for the next pair of nips right now, ladies only!"Now, we have a couple of problems here. First, while you won't find a guy with a deeper appreciation of the female anatomy than I, screaming how much you want to see boobs at your pizzeria using the all-caps faux pas is akin to the creepy guy in the corner of the strip club who keeps asking one stripper exactly what time she'd be leaving out the back and whether she's allergic to ether. And who didn't see the eventual backlash coming? Large swaths of men may think of free-spirited ho-bags when the term "college girl" is uttered, but that's bullshit. College is also the place where feminism spreads, where activism finds roots, and where the love of battling a corporation is second only to a love of a cancelled class. Of course people rallied against these idiots.
"Pizzas $5 right at Drews or free for titties."
"WE WANT MORE TITS!!! #showusyourtits #uiuc FREE PIZZA"
But, hey, they cancelled their Twitter account, so they're clearly sorry. I imagine we'll get a claim of a hack by the Syrian Electronic Army any moment now. In the meantime, there has to be a better-behaved business that will sell you some pizza in rural Illinois.
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No beads for you Tim
As marketing, it's as tasteless as a lot of cheap college-town pizza, but hardly worth a moral panic. I bet some girls can turn it around, too. Any guesses? Show us your dick for a free all-beef frank! Drop your trousers for $5 off your spaghetti with 2 meatballs!
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Re: No beads for you Tim
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How you SEEM to have changed on feminism, Timmy!
http://www.techdirt.com/blog/wireless/articles/20101001/15475611255/starbucks-staffer-claim s-he-was-fired-for-turning-off-wifi-to-block-porn-watchers.shtml#c94
Which I asked about and you specifically confirmed:
http://www.techdirt.com/blog/wireless/articles/20101001/15475611255/starbucks-staffer-claims-he-was- fired-for-turning-off-wifi-to-block-porn-watchers.shtml#c271
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Re: How you SEEM to have changed on feminism, Timmy!
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Re: Re: How you SEEM to have changed on feminism, Timmy!
out_of_the_blue just hates it when due process is enforced.
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Re: How you SEEM to have changed on feminism, Timmy!
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Re: Re: How you SEEM to have changed on feminism, Timmy!
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How sexist
Or more likely, I demand free pizza or else I'll flash my man-boobs ...
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I honestly feel sorry for the store, but think that they could have handled things better. Instead of shutting down their account they could have used it to issue an apology. The most likely possibility is the owner/manager knowing nothing about social media, so when things went wrong the instinctive reaction was to just cancel the account.
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Are you sure? It is Illinois we are talking about here.
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Still I laughed at the idea. A $20 pizza for just a flash? I'd be in hahahaha
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As a former resident of Champaign, I can assure you that there are places there which sell $20 pizzas that are worth it (Papa Dels comes to mind, there might be others too). But they don't ask you to flash them.
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That advertisement plan...
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Hahahahhaha.... Jane Russell eat your heart out.
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But that aside, there are far better pizza joints around here. Papa Del's is 100 times better than Drew's.
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silly and tasteless...
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Good ol' Champaign-Urbana
I have no idea why anyone would eat inferior pizza here, as we have some of the finest pizza establishments anywhere. Papa Del's, as mentioned above, is excellent, as is the newer, thinner Manolo's. But there are always some morons stumbling around Campustown. Maybe Drew's customers enjoy flashing more than they like good pizza.
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Pics or it didn't happen! ;)
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Just how large are they that you can knock them partially off base? Or did you mean customer-base off?
Anyway, most men would crave pie after seeing all the boobies. Hair pie that is.
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