Homeware retailer Habitat has got rid of an intern after an ill-judged marketing campaign - piggybacking Spring promotion messages on to newsy Twitter hashtags - blew up in its face.

The messages - like “Join the database for free to win a £1,000 gift card” - included unrelated hashtags like “#iPhone” and Iranian election contender “#Mousavi” in a bid to get seen by the wide audiences tracking those news subjects

Sounds fine enough (if you’re an old school marketing department writing the book on how not to do social media marketing), but the outcry from the Twitterati, which has its fair share of would-be social marketing consultants, was predictably vociferous.

Habitat apologised, saying it was “totally against our communications strategy” and explaining: “This was not done by an agency. The hashtags were uploaded without Habitat’s authorisation by an overenthusiastic intern who did not fully understand the ramifications of his actions. He is no longer associated with Habitat.” Fingers burned, it still plans to use Twitter for social media marketing.