Yesterday Daily Bread flagged up the French study into the effects on health of the Monsanto herbicide Roundup and a GM strain of maize resistant to it.

The response to the story was overwhelming. In terms of web traffic, it’s far and away our biggest story ever (until our Kate Middleton picture special next week, that is).

More than 10,000 people have ‘recommended’ our original Monsanto story via Facebook - unheard-of numbers for a trade title - and many hundreds more have sent the story on to friends and followers via Twitter.

Of course, GM is one of those emotive subjects that draws passionate responses on all sides of the debate, as the comments section of our stories amply demonstrate. Even so, it’s quite something, as a journalist, to witness how social media can help a story spread like wildfire.

Twitter also leapt into action this week - to very different effect - when Waitrose called on followers to complete the sentence “I shop at Waitrose because…”

By now, you’ll almost certainly have seen the stories in the papers about the wags that inundated Waitrose with their bon mots about where to buy the best peacock feed, and so on, lampooning with varying degrees of wit the supermarket’s upmarket image.

The stunt has been widely reported as a gaffe; an ‘epic fail’, in web parlance; as Waitrose shooting itself in both feet with the family’s antique blunderbuss. But some see it differently. Hopping opportunistically on to the bandwagon - in the finest tradition of social media - digital marketing bod Jason Woodford popped into Daily Bread’s inbox today with the following counter-intuitive take.

“Have we become that naïve to believe that one of our most respected supermarket chains wasn’t expecting such comments, which reinforced its upmarket image?” he wondered.

“Any element of ‘class bashing’ has probably increased the ‘snob’ value of shopping at Waitrose among its target audience. This was a very clever marketing ploy from Waitrose and it has reinforced its brand values of quality and reliably excellent service as a key point of differentiation from the other grocery chains.”

Is he giving Waitrose too much credit? Or were the Twitterati just pawns being expertly manoeuvred by the retailer’s marketing masterminds, in a very crafty game of reverse psychology?

Whatever your view, don’t keep it to yourself.

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