Marketing VOX has a great story about a campaign that, to quote Robbie Burns, has “gang aglay.”

Victoria’s Secret apparently introduced a line of clothing called “Pink Collegiate” last year (which makes its “A TRADITION OF EXCELLENCE” crest a little silly, but I digress…), and started with a list of about 30 US schools.

Then they asked users to vote for their school to be included in their branded merch. But they apparently didn’t count on creative computer types at various schools gaming the voting.

Then a dude from Drexel University spent three minutes writing a Perl script, and 12 hours later he’d logged 5 MILLION votes for his school. Then a guy at Texas Tech wrote a script that auto-voted Zion Bible College into the top 10 (Not sure there’s a lot of Victoria’s Secret being worn at ZBC, although there are likely a few well-pawed catalogues floating around the dorms.)

Then a mass attack from MIT crashed the Pink system. (favorite quote of the whole story, from an MIT student: “at MIT we are motivated by the ridiculous to do this kind of thing…”

AFTER that, Victoria’s Secret put a captcha in place to limit voting.

Not hard to see that the lingerie folks were a little naked in terms of IT security. A word to the wise for anyone who’s planning on creating an online contest, particularly one encouraging university students (who have time on their hands and a licence to prank) to vote on stuff.

Ciao,
Bob.

One Response to “The best laid plans, Victoria’s Secret edition.”