How MTS provoked spam on Vkontakte

Being the leader of several TOP groups of Vkontakte, a few weeks ago I noticed a curious spam leading to the MTS website, or rather to one of the MTS projects - Red Quest . Surprised, but did not attach much importance. Later, the volumes and arrogance of this spam led me to figure out how it happened that a large company chooses such, let's say, “partisan” methods of promotion.



How exactly was spam provoked? Everything is quite simple: the players decided to stimulate the spread of invitations by encouraging Vkontakte votes. I invited 1 friend - get 1 vote, a friend took some steps in the game, answered questions - get more, the invitee also gets votes, maximum 200 votes. You can withdraw votes or use them in the game only by linking the MTS number to your account.



And what we are witnessing: ordinary players and more professional spammers have begun to fill the VC with their invitations. The existence of a gray business tied to voices, I think, is well known to many, but without professional spammers, players would create very good traffic - the search shows only a small part of what is in current news.

')

Apparently, the responsibility for promoting the Red Quest site is taken over by the Grape agency, a little earlier they had already shared with the community about their methods of attracting an audience: habrahabr.ru/blogs/social_networks/109153



In a previous post, geisher wrote:

The case of Red Quest is in fact unique, and it has a lot of interesting things besides promotion in Vkontakte. Sometime later I will describe his other parties, in particular, the viral element.

I do not know what kind of viral element was used last time, but now we were all able to witness the whole sophistication of the marketing thought of the agency’s specialists. Virus is present immediately in 2 senses, only, it seems to me, more than those who perceive the information sent as pathogenic.



I must say that Vkontakte responds fairly quickly to this kind of promotion, and all links that advance in this way very quickly get on the blacklist, and here the magic blocking window very quickly appeared:



but literally every other day, the link was removed from the black list. Well, they would have agreed, MTS is still a large partner of the VC, and the specific application of the game brings a good income. It turns out quite nice: MTS spam, Vkontakte condones this.

What audience can a similar promotion strategy be focused on?

It is difficult to limit it by age or interest - the assignments may be interesting for both 14-year-old metallers and 30-year-old managers who are on leave to Goa.

Yeah, I immediately introduced the managers choosing a bungalow with a good Wi-Fi connection, so that after the beach you could be hacked to RedQuest. Let's leave managers sunbathing in Goa, 14-year-olds are also quite solvent audience, and the most important thing is an audience that is easily manipulated. Well, not a bad idea, taking care of the new generation, nurturing your loyal customers. I think, not a small part of them will become managers on holiday in Goa after some time. It is not necessary to do a deep statistical analysis in order to understand that there is not one shkolota in contact.



Have the marketers of the project thought about the image of the company in the eyes of a more spiritualized serious audience, watching every day a fair amount of spam linked to MTS? It seems to me that the promoters of the Red Quest project do not care for this image.