An aspiring Aussie influencer has received an overwhelming amount of “rude comments” after her attempt to shame a local Melbourne restaurant backfired spectacularly.
Micro-influencer Jamieson May, who has almost 9K followers on TikTok and 15.6K followers on Instagram, reached out to Patsy’s on Franklin Street in Melbourne, requesting a collab with the business.
When the restaurant turned her down with a blunt response, the TikToker put Patsy’s on blast in a two-and-a-half-minute-long rant, saying it was “disgusting”.
“I received the most horrible message yesterday, from a restaurant [after] wanting to work with them and I need to make you aware so you guys never work with them and know your standards,” she told her followers.
Jamieson May has built up a loyal following on Instagram. (Image: Instagram @jamiesonmay)
After offering her content creation services to the restaurant, she received a short but curt message in reply.
“You don’t seem to have any followers maybe you should approach us when you have over 100K,” the restaurant wrote.
The influencer was clearly offended by the reply, so sent a short one back saying: “Sorry. But that is extremely rude.”
“Perhaps… but you are pretending to be influential on social media and that’s just not true and rather than me just saying that you are lying and pretending to be beneficial to our business… I just said come back when you’re actually able to do what you think we should engage you to do,” the restaurant replied.
“Is it rude to question something that is obviously not true?”
May then blocked the restaurant, refusing to engage any further. She told her followers she was “gobsmacked” and “disgusted” by the reply.
“This is clearly someone not in marketing, they don’t understand literally anything. Your account and content is never, ever about follower count. That [has] gone out the window yonks ago,” she said.
“I’ve never had a problem with this before in my life.”
The TikToker didn’t receive the response she was expecting, telling news.com.au her comment section was soon bombarded with “rude comments” about how she was an “entitled influencer” who was just looking for free stuff. She’s since turned off the comments on both Instagram and TikTok.
“When I first reached out [to] them, my messages was a simple direct message that said ‘Hi! My name is Jamieson May and I am a UGC Creator! I would love to create some content for your business… I never asked for any free services or free things but they bluntly responded with their 100K comment,” she claimed.
Jamieson May blocked Patsy’s after receiving their response. (Image: TikTok @jamiesonmayyy)
Patsy’s hits back after Aussie influencer restaurant drama
Patsy’s owners Clinton Trevisi and Mathew Guthrie have doubled down on their response, saying they didn’t see value in what May was offering.
“I think judging from her reaction to me being blunt about her unsolicited marketing reach out, she was surprised that we were not interested [in] working with her,” Guthrie told news.com.au.
“Obviously the reason we did not want to collaborate with her is quite easy to understand when you glance through her profiles on various sites. Her followers are not really people that we have in the venue often and probably not the market that we are looking to engage with.”
The chefs insisted they were trying not to “add to the pile on”, but had a hunch the video rant was a marketing ploy.
“I think she was just hoping to increase her visibility with these outrage posts. It sort of has worked already but I am not sure how it will be able to be monetised as marketing,” Guthrie said.
In the end, their short message exchange has resulted in more publicity for both Patsy’s and May, so everybody’s a winner, I guess?
