I’m not one who likes to troll – at least not deliberately – but I like to run my own set of perhaps, flawed but still relevant experiments when it comes to digital.
My latest one was in relation to my current need to get a printer which also coincides with the last few days of the Dubai Shopping Festival (DSF). This year was the 20th anniversary of DSF so apparently sales were meant to be crazier than ever.
I’ve been away for most of DSF so decided to try my luck in the dying days to hopefully score a bargain and also find out which of the big brands were actively taking notice on social media during what’s arguably one of the busiest retail periods of the year in Dubai.
I tweeted out to a number of brands who sell electronics asking who had the best deals on printers during DSF. And only one brand replied: JadoPado.com – which if you’re familiar with their brand and also my blog, comes as no surprise.
I will admit that I had incorrectly tagged an inactive Carrefour account so they weren’t initially given a fair chance to respond.
JadoPado’s response was great but I wanted to see who else would respond so I followed up and also corrected the Carrefour account.
It took a good few hours but Emax eventually replied but simply told me to call their hotline and someone would be able to help. Seriously?!
This is an embarrassment to all brands involved except JadoPado. Firstly, here’s someone who is keen to buy and is after a good deal – every brand wants to be known as having the best deals (even if you’re not the cheapest, you want to appear…). JadoPado were quick and pointed me to their website. Emax were slow and pointed me to the telephone. I had to go to their website to find out more but seriously, it’s DSF and that too the last few days when people often expect even more crazier deals – so this was a missed opportunity for these brands to get a sale.
One way to capitalise on this is to actively ‘listen’ on social media for brand mentions and tackle things accordingly. It’s especially useful when you’ve got campaigns running with specific hashtags or in this case, if there’s a brand mention along with a mention of DSF, then that’s something to look out for. There’s loads of social media monitoring and listening tools out there that can help and it’s not that difficult to manage.
