22 February 2011

Maybe we are bit naive here, (we do live a sheltered life) but we were very surprised to see some 21st Century marketing tactics being used recently by the world's oldest profession.

We've just returned from Mobile World Congress in Barcelona and like everyone associated with the event (clearly EVERYONE associated with the event) we were avidly following the #MWC11 hashtag that sprang up around the show.

About two days before the show began we noticed a little flurry of new followers - some of them were clients, prospects and analysts who'd seen our #MWC11 tagged posts but a significant few were from some Barcelona based escort agencies.

The day before the show we got a few (how to put this..?) VERY direct direct messages from these escort Twitter accounts and these continued throughout the show. Then, as soon as the show was over these new followers unfollowed us and disappeared.

Now, Twitter has its knockers (this pun is very much intended) but this clearly demonstrates the power of Twitter to monitor trends, shape a marketing message and reach out to a qualified, target audience - in this case tens of thousands of business executives away from home in a strange city.

I'm  not sure the powers that be at Twitter would want to use this as a case study but we like it...