News

Australian retail marketing scheme Click Frenzy becomes #clickfail

November 21, 2012

It was supposed to be the biggest online shopping event of the year down under, Australia's answer to Black Friday. But Tuesday evening's Click Frenzy event turned into a public relations disaster when the site failed to let shoppers in for up to three hours.

Blogger Asher Moses said the whole program was a "marketing exercise run by technical amateurs," and hinted that the company behind the event was more concerned with capturing shopper data — with no word yet on how it might be used — than in making sure those shoppers were able to make purchases.

Participating retailers paid anywhere from $2,000 to $30,000 to be featured on the Click Frenzy website. Shortly after the event started, an IT company monitoring the sites involved noted that about two thirds of them experienced technical issues.

Shortly thereafter, the #clickfail hashtag started to emerge as shoppers took their frustration to Twitter.

Wasn't just IT amateur hour over at ClickFrenzy, but IT security amateur hour too zdnet.com/password-expos… HT @mukimu & @techmeme #clickfail

— Ian Yip (@ianyip) November 21, 2012

the real shame about this #clickFrenzy #clickFail is that it might make a lot of retailers wary of online, set us back some years.

— Sunny Wijeratne (@SunnyWijeratne) November 21, 2012

I'm declaring it #clickmas (when online companies not participating in #clickfail have even better deals)

— nerdi (@nerdi) November 21, 2012

The only frenzy going on is the people in the click frenzy office running around with their arms flailing shouting profanities #clickfail

— Meggsie (@AdiosMFYOYO) November 20, 2012