Are you digitally ready for a Snickers bar?

University students have long been targets for advertising of products and events through leafleting campaigns and through email spamming.  During my tenure as a hall warden at Reading University I had frequently to deal with people who had gained access to halls to distribute advertising.  Often the products advertised were not really in the student’s interests – a 3am disco during exams period comes to mind.  However the people distributing leaflets needed a physical presence to conduct their advertising campaigns and this meant the activity could be limited.  The ruling on advertising Snickers bars on the twitter streams of Rio Ferdinand and Katie Price reported on the BBC this morning http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-17281219 may have opened the door to much more subtle and potentially intrusive advertising in my opinion.  A series of ‘teaser’ tweets not marked as sponsored links preceded a single tweet naming the product and with the #spon tag.  The digitally ready person will now need training from marketing experts in how to spot adverts before the sponsored link is revealed:-(

About Alastair Culham

A professional botanist and biologist with an interest in promoting biological knowledge and awareness to all.
This entry was posted in Social media and tagged , , , , . Bookmark the permalink.

One Response to Are you digitally ready for a Snickers bar?

  1. Doug Belshaw says:

    Hi Alastair, I absolutely agree that people need training to think critically more generally. Hopefully then they will be able to spot these specific examples more readily. 🙂

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *