This sort of campaign may well go viral in the short term and the marketing people at Poundland will be patting each other on the back , no doubt - but Twitter is an entirely differently populated beast from the actual typical shopper at a discount store generally found in a rather unloved town centre/ retail park.
Anyone who actually thinks the young male aged 16-25 is suddenly going to desert normal shopping outlets (predominantly online ) and traipse off to Pundland : well , you are the naïve ones. If the y do, they will step one foot inside, witness the type of store it is, and turn tail , possibly having bought a bag of sweetsor some teabags in embarrassment at walking out with nothing.
The posters on here who are saying it's a marketing triumph should wait until quarterly sales figures are announced. How many people in the UK are on Twitter? How many shoppers aged , let's say 35+ from the C2DE demographic use Twitter? If Poundland are trying to change their demographic , why are they attempting to reach out to young males, who predominantly shop online and seek approval via designer labels ?? Bizarre.
There is no such thing as bad publicity is a very old fashioned mantra. Huge damage was done to Pepsi by their Black Lives Matter attempted campaign.
This Poundland thing is just part of the 'can say anything we want on Twitter' effect. They have constructed a campaign that does not address their key demographic and, actually, that is considered crass marketing and very sloppy. Plus, it isn't even original. It is highly derivative of, for example, Team America.
The person I know who would find this funny is actually a retail snob and he would actively sneer at Poundland shops themselves.
Twinings response about core values says it all really.
I am not personally offended by this. I just think it is shit.