The tweet is a customer service review with 8.8 million distribution. "Wow, dude. You're an idiot and just lost a huge sale," then the store's name, then the Julia Roberts comparison. Three sentences, and a shop that bills itself as one of the most beautiful in the city now has a Google review section filling up with one-star reviews from fans.
The mechanism is the part worth reading. In the old days a celebrity with a bad shopping day would call a friend. Now the friend is the follower count, the review is public, and the store's official position is "declined to comment," which is the PR department doing its job without ever being hired.
The "Pretty Woman" reference does the second job. Everyone already knows how that scene ends: the woman returns with the shopping bags and a line about a big mistake. Clarkson posted the first act of a movie everyone has seen, and the store is now cast in the part without a contract, a reading, or a reply.
YOUR TURN: When a celebrity names a small shop in a tweet, does the shop owe a response or does the tweet owe an apology?
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