The National Lottery's Latest Viral Campaign Has Gone Very, Very Wrong
On a scale of #susanalbumparty to Walkers' ill-fated #WalkersWave campaign, the National Lottery's latest marketing idea is off the charts.
As a way of saying thank you to the British athletes who competed in the World Championships in Athletics, the National Lottery thought it would be a good idea to engage Twitter.
(It is never a good idea to engage Twitter.)
The lottery's interactive tech generates a photo or video of a British athlete holding a card with the name of any Twitter user who retweets the lottery's inspiring messages.
And as everyone but the social media team at the National Lottery could have predicted, the people of Twitter wasted no time in abusing their new-found powers.
From the relatively innocent to "YOUR DA SELLS AVON" to "YOUR NANS DEAD", the gang is all there.
Would like to know who's in charge of the national lottery's social media... #nationallottery pic.twitter.com/1nzTPh6hNi
- Sam Stemp (@stempyyy99) August 14, 2017
How someone at the U.K. National Lottery must be feeling right now... #TNLgate #nationallottery pic.twitter.com/UwwOfoOij2
- August ⛔️ (@SylverPfeil) August 15, 2017
On a PR disaster scale of Pepsi to United Airlines, where does the National Lottery rank? pic.twitter.com/ewom0WPwjK
- Rob Murphy (@roobmurph) August 14, 2017
Someone at The National Lottery is getting fired tomorrow... pic.twitter.com/7TCutpABF8
- sophie (@sophxthompson) August 14, 2017
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Oh National Lottery! What have you done 😂😂😂 pic.twitter.com/4uqgya8gRD
- Robbie Hodgson (@robbie210793) August 14, 2017
(They get worse by the way. A lot worse.)
A spokesperson for Camelot – the National Lottery's operators – said: "We are aware that some people are maliciously targeting our British Athletics Twitter campaign with offensive and abhorrent content. We are dealing with this as quickly as possible and are hugely sorry for any offence caused by this malicious act."
It's only a matter of time until the whole thing is deleted from the confines of the internet for all eternity.
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