by Brad Cohen :: @supnah
Kudos and congratulations to Best Buy. Not only did they manage to vanquish Circuit City, but they also take the award for the “First Company to Air a Television Commercial Displaying a Twitter URL the Entire Time.” It’s a coveted award, I know, but why is it important? (Disclaimer: I’m not up on television that much these last couple of weeks, so this may have been airing for a while, but hey - it’s new to me.)
It’s important because it shows that enterprise companies are beginning to realize the value in cross-leveraging their marketing assets and integrating their initiatives across different media. If you’re going to spend millions of dollars on an ad buy in this modern world, it’s crucial to find ways to extend the reach of your messages and drive traffic to methods of message distribution that are more permanent than the commercials themselves.
A traditional television commercial ends, and you’ve either made an impact or not. The viewer either experienced something that may convert into revenue for your brand, or not. However, if you take that opportunity to not only display an advertisement, but also display something like a Twitter or Facebook account where the viewer can follow or friend you, then you have done something more. You’ve created an opportunity for the viewer to take an action that is very low-effort, and establishes a relationship that can be leveraged repeatedly long after the commercial has stopped airing.
They post the URL for a Twitter account named @TwelpForce during the entire commercial. Visiting this account we see that it’s first tweet was June 23rd, and as of July 23rd they’re up to 2,944 followers. Now you may say to yourself “That’s nothing. There are plenty of people out there with millions of followers, so what is 3,000 followers for a brand like Best Buy.” But you’d be missing the point. The point is that Best Buy was going to run these commercials anyway. They’ve got their budget allocated for this spend, and now they don’t just get the benefit of running the ad - they also get three thousand (or more if they continue marketing this Twitter account) longer term connections in one of their marketing distribution channels. Bonus.
It’s an important step that you can expect more companies to follow. And it’s a move respectable enough to almost make me forget that they chose the name “TwelpForce.”
Here’s the ad:
Last 5 posts by BradCohen
- Open Graph and SEO - April 27th, 2010
- Streisand Effect - A Lesson for Enterprise - August 5th, 2009
- Twitter URL Expansion Arrives at Last - July 18th, 2009
- Twitter Messaging - May 21st, 2009
- Wolfram Alpha and Google Squared - May 19th, 2009
Tags: Facebook, marketing, multi-media, ROI, Social Media
