Gasping For Air: #GaspFail the Sequel
Remember Gasp, the “fashion forward” clothing store filled with “retail superstars” that found out the power of social media the hard way when their outrageous response to a customer complaint leaked online?
You might remember we posted a quite a bit about Gasp as the story broke, resulting in our posts ranking high for a slew of Gasp-related search terms. Despite our primarily negative commentary, we noticed a comment left on our recap story by a reader named ‘Jacqui’ that was not only sympathetic, but outright defended Gasp for their actions, saying:
We thought it was strange considering the general sentiment towards the brand at the time, but hey we approved the comment regardless and closed the door on the #GaspFail saga.
After approving some comments on the Google+ brand page video Stew Art Media CEO Jim Stewart did on Wednesday, I rediscovered the above comment and decided to dig a bit deeper.
First we ran a few quick searches on the email the commenter left to no avail. ‘Jacqui’ is either very careful in protecting her email address, or doesn’t use it all that often. Fortunately for us, the comment was also logged with an IP address. With the IP address in hand we set upon an epic detective quest filled with intrigue, deception and sudden plot turns to discover the commenters true identity.
Just kidding, we just Googled it. Here’s what we found:
A directory submission article for Gasp written from the same IP address the commenter left on our blog. A man named Eddie, which is coincidentally the first name of Gasp’s operations manager, posted the directory submission.
It doesn’t stop there though. A quick search for the comment’s content sees the exact same comment posted on two other blogs offering commentary on #GaspFail. We found the exact same comment posted on The Punch and Moxie. ‘Jacqui’ must really love Gasp and the way they treat their customers. While we’re talking about The Punch, if you guys are reading this you should give us a call, your duplicate content issues are strangling your Google rankings.
We know what you’re thinking! Gasp wouldn’t possibly fuel the flames of their online hate any further with fake comments from their operations manager. That would damage their integrity. Right?
Frankly we’re surprised ‘Jacqui’ was such a huge Gasp fan that she even masked her IP address to match Gasp’s for the comments she posted across the internet. That’s some serious brand love for a company who could really use it right now.
Thanks for the comment Eddie Jacqui. Feel free to drop us another line.
Jim’s been here for a while, you know who he is.
