Adecco Group offers students a chance to win tablet PC in exchange of manufacturing tweets with the link to
the company's website. After the company sent out email to those who have already applied for the summer jobs during Olympic Games, Twitter is now filled with "spam" messages repeating "London2012 needs 100K students! Register for a paid SUMMER JOB OF A LIFETIME & win an AcerTabPC".
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| Email from Adecco |
I am one of the students who received an email from Summer Job for The Games, an organisation recruiting temporary staffs for London 2012. The organisation is run by Adecco Group UK and Ireland and seems to be looking for more security officers for the venues. The only things you have to do to join the competition for Acer Tablet PC is tweet the advert and then follow
"@jobsforthegames". After several hours, @jobsforthegames was satisfied with so many tweets and tweeted back "Good response to the competition guys. Well done! Get your friends to register too"
This case made me think about the ethical issue concerning a company using social media as a means of advert. Your friends may be annoyed with irrelevant tweets when they accessed to their account. The company spent a little money out of the budget on a cheap tablet while the tweets spread out by words of mouth with no cost.
Adecco is clever, but I think it is ethically problematic for two reasons; it used applicants email address to ask tweeting, it is abusing twitter. It is open to question. I am curious what other people think about it.
I don't think this does as much harm to Adecco as it does to whoever wants to get their friends to join the competition.
ReplyDeleteIf your friends realise you're giving out their email addresses and they then get spammed to enter a competition because of you, they will probably block or unfriend you.
The same goes with tweeting about this.
I think this is a really cheap move from an organisation who apparently is desperate to get some followers.
Furthermore, if they only give out 1 tablet for 100.000 people, your chances are next to zero to get that tablet.
Thanks Serge, this is my point. Adecco gets lots of followers with the price of cheap tablet. Once they know your twitter account, they might post another advert on your account in the future.
ReplyDelete