For anyone that has been following some of my recent posts will have noticed that I've not been too pleased with a company called crazycameras. This was for the simple reason that they did not tell the truth about their products, could not manage that famous p***up in that famous brewery and all in all are 'bad sorts', the sort of company that does the internet no favours at all.
Now let me make it clear, I, like many others did, in the end get my camera. Sure it was the wrong model (as USA one and not a UK one), does not have a valid UK warranty (thanks to Panasonic's own rules), but I did get my camera (even though I had cancelled it a number of times).
I am saying this to point out that my 'Twitter crusade' has not been a personal one, but rather one that was intended to rid the Internet of a particularly useless company, rather as a doctor would want to rid the world of a nasty virus.
Now it may be that Crazycameras have at last had enough of all the bad publicity and reviews (mine were just a drop in the ocean, there were plenty of others outside of Twitter) and / or that Google have seen the light and have stopped their ads, but they do seem to have gone (at least from my viewpoint) and that is all to the good. For without their pay per click ads, they are not likely to snare as many unfortunates into buying from them. Still this could be a short term thing and is one that I am keeping my eye on.
During my little crusade I am pleased to report that my Tweets must have raised Crazycameras ignoble profile to many hundreds if not thousands of Twitterers, as well as to Google, Panasonic and Canon. I must admit to not being sure if any of these big hitters were / are bothered about it all, their view seeming to be 'nothing to do with us'. This by the way is something which I simply do not agree with at all. They are the ones supplying the cameras and they are the ones allowing this company to mislead people by the use of a .co.uk domain name in their adverts, still they are also the ones who are having their names associated with the whole sad affair and that can't help them either in the long run...
Still if they (crazycameras) do decide to start placing their ads on Google again, I will be ready to act and having seen the power of the net for myself here, even if only in a small way, will be ready to bring into play another weapon, that of the dedicated website.
One of the best examples of this was the 'rebellion' against Simon Cowell's Xfactor by a certain Jon Morter. Jon decided to stop Simon's apparent command of the Christmas No. 1 and thus chose the appropriately named group 'Rage Against the Machine' as his weapon of choice. He then succeeded, by using the power of the net's Facebook (and of course Twitter), in beating perhaps, the most powerful force in music in the world today.
When the Guardian broke the news to Morter that he had won, he was initially lost for words. "Oh bloody hell," he said, as the consequences of what he had done became clear. Composing himself, he said: "I think it just shows that in this day and age, if you want to say something, then you can – with the help of the internet and social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter. If enough people are with you, you can beat the status quo."
Enough said, the proof was in the pudding and if Crazycameras try to make a come back on Google, we will see what a proper Twitter campaign, coupled with a dedicated 'Say No to Crazycameras' can achieve. It would after all be a very interesting experiment indeed.
More on the power of Social Media tomorrow...
No comments:
Post a Comment