How Marketing Destroyed The Soul of the Poppy Appeal Online A Lament

Showing Support I sign up around 20 th October to get me Poppy stuck on Twitter ID picture. I assumed that it was from The Royal British Legion. Turns out that it isn’t. It’s from a bloke called JoshuaKAL, but who cares. markinreading Beforemarkinreading After

Five Tweets That Started It And there I was, twittering away on 29 th October 2009 starts promoting #poppytyranny. Seems, unpleasant to me, and not like The Royal British Legion at all. Turns out, that it isn’t.

Then We All Got Confused

More Confusion The Day After So I’m getting more is massive and links to is barely active and shows no web page in its links to in its profile poppy_man is least-used and links to

Different Poppies - More Confusing And so many types of Poppy. There’s even two types of Twibbon Poppy. I’m well fearful now.

I Fear The Worst! With all this fundraising and all these identities, I’m thinking......this is a: FIELD DAY FOR HOAXERS FIELD DAY FOR SPAMMERS And I’m, like, whoa!

British Legion Home I seek the definitive source – go to The Royal British Legion website! No problem. But no reference to Twitter there.

support Doesn’t Doesn’t But the mobile number used checks out – so at least there is no rip-off going on.

@PoppySupport Is Devious Everyone on Twitter should be open about who they are. Especially the Royal British is not open. Links to British Legion, yes. But not identifying who they are. Yet they’ve achieved more online support than the Royal British legion did.

The Charity Commission Charity number confirmed. Name of organisation confirmed. This becomes important later.

Search for PoppySupport Search for “PoppySupport” Nothing.

Search For PoppyMan Search for “PoppyMan” Nothing.

Search for PoppyLegion Search for “PoppyLegion” Nothing.

Search For Poppy_Man Search for “Poppy_Man” Nothing.

Poppy.org Front Page On I find the heart and soul of the Poppy Appeal. This is what it’s all about. But no mention of Twitter.

Images from britishlegion.org.uk

The voice of British Legion’s Web Agency

PoppyLegion Frontpage So I visit PoppyLegion’s page on Twitter. 90 tweets – quite active. 163 followers – not as significant as PoppySupport. A bit trendy and cutesy.

Poppy_Man

Poppy Legion Introduces Herself Poppy’s well cool, innit. She’s got “hot new content”. Cool signature. Gr8 tweets n’ all. Happenin’ chick. I is well impressed coz she’s like me, aw’rite?

But She’s A Cartoon But she’s a sham. She’s not really blogging – the PR people at British Legion do that. She’s not posting tweets. On Remembrance Sunday, I’ll be remembering real people, not cartoon characters.

What is iChild??? This “iChild” thing leaps out. What is it. The iChild site lets my kids make Bravery Medals out of paper. Nice. So I click on the link to iChild...

iChild – An Insurance Product!!! This “iChild” thing turns out to be “operated by iChild, a division of family & Education Marketing Ltd” and “sponsored by Childsure” Childsure is an insurance product for kids health underwritten by Aviva and offered by Sure Insurance Services ltd

The Real Remembrance Day Voice “The weren’t lying or patronising” Simon Brown, injured soldier speaking on the 2009 Poppy appeal launch video The sincere and honest reason why we are here: “For Their Sake”

“Those lovely people at iChild” The False Remembrance Day Voice I hear commercialism from Poppy Legion. We need to sell insurance for private healthcare She says “Those lovely people at iChild”. This is sick. A character which was a false construct, with a false blog, a false story and a commercial motive.

Is It Just Me? And on iChild’s site: Is making your own “bravery medal” or “making a poppy” the same as making bonfire night decorations or halloween bunting? Is it?

Flickr – over 2,000 members and 12,500 photographs YouTube – 26 videos, total views 5,400, most viewed video 2,382

Facebook – no action from Poppy yet Other pages: British Armed Forces 49,139 fans Action for Armed Forces – 961 fans Armed Forces Day – 183,783 fans Maximum Respect for the British Armed Forces – 562,931 fans

Bebo – 1 profile view 0 comments 0 friends Known as: Poppy Legion

The Poppy Appeal – Contrasting Feelings The one on the left is real. It moves me. The one on the right is about raising money.

Embarassing Tweets From Poppy Legion

The PR Around Poppy Is Important