Palessi

Payless Shoes Trolls Social Media Fashion Influencers

[lexipixel]

A brilliant PR / marketing stunt -- Payless Shoes opens a fake store in upscale LA mall... invites social media "influencers" for a [paid] sneak-peak marketing survey type gathering -- gets the influencers on camera drooling over Payless' $20 to $30 shoes and estimating their value at $500-$600+ a pair. These people were ready to offer up their followers as the type of fashion savvy customers "PALESSI" would want.

[ken_b]

Well here we are at a webmaster website talking about a shoe company PR stunt, so I guess it worked to some extent.

[lucy24]

The sad part is that the $500 shoe--the “real” one from the Expensive Brand store--and the $20 shoe all too probably really are the identical shoe.

[lexipixel]

My point in posting was more about the trolling of supposed "influencers" than the free PR "that company" gets. It was the culmination of years of communications evolution --- something that grew out of message boards like our own WebmasterWorld --- how the medium "online messaging" went from:

...trusted (frequent) poster, moderator, knowledgeable expert, etc down to "online personality",to "overnight social media star", "number of followers","fake followers", bots, trolls... etc.. etc..

Remember "flash mobs"? (a phenomenon enabled by the early "texting" / pager devises).

Sometimes good trolling is more effective than the message / messenger being trolled.

Maybe my point here is that you can consider "good trolling", (or "white hat trolling"), as an effective social media marketing tool. Troll the right message in the right way and you win the messenger's media exposure.

[tangor]

That and ... "caught you with pants down emperor's clothes snoot in air and guess what, we got you covered" also works. :)

The brilliance was exposing the influencers as fluff and farmer's friend.