Debenham's Twitter Assistants

I Discussed Nick Parish's Mashable article in my last post. I continue in this post with Nick's mention of the Debenham Twitter Assistants. I quote:

Debenhams, for example, appointed six in-store sales associates as “Twitter Assistants” to monitor a designated hashtag during its four-day New Season Spectacular. One roamed each floor of the department store, fielding questions about the products, offering to meet customers and show them where things were located, and generally answering customer queries.

At first this struck me as Debenhams embracing new tech in an innovative way. But then I thought to myself: if I was in the store I'd verbally ask the store assistants about their products, they're easy to find. If I was reading on the web I'd probably email the company. So under what occasion might you want to twitter these assistants? Perhaps when you're shopping in the city and want to know whether it is worth your while to enter the store during busy shopping season? Maybe. if so... do the assistants really need twitter t-shirts? I think Debenhams Twitter assistants were 1/4 embracing tech and 3/4 gimmicky attempt to look to be embracing technology for short term marketing gig.