I sometimes hesitate to bang on about how revolutionary Twitter is as a communications platform. It’s almost becoming a cliche, and lauding 140 characters of plain text can come across as an overclaim.
But when you see how the medium excels with breaking news stories like this (and thankfully, early reports are that everyone got off the plane safely), the potency of immediate sharing by anyone with a mobile – including pictures – becomes clear.
In the 7 minutes it’s taken me to write this post, over 2,100 people have posted tweets incorporating the word plane.
A-list evidence of the mainstreaming of social media marketing: Britney Spears’ people are looking for someone to manage her presence on Twitter, Facebook et al
This is no gimmick – it’s the right way to manage her reputation through engaging with fans where and how they spend their time. It also allows her to side-step media spin and position herself exactly as she wishes.
More traditional products and services must wake up to the opportunity and threat here – their brands are already being talked about on the net – they’re just not involved in the conversation.
With the best product pun since Salt ‘n’ Lineker, Ben & Jerry’s have scored some great pre-inauguration PR by renaming their Butter Pecan line to Yes Pecan – highly talkable and bang in line with the brand’s witty, socially progressive positioning
Contrary, social media savvy marketing from Burger King. De-friend 10 people on Facebook and get a Whopper
Matt Mason has a great post today noting that Nine Inch Nails’ Ghosts I-IV was Amazon’s best-selling album of 2008 - despite also being available as a free download.
Sampling has long been a valid marketing tactic, but giving the whole thing away and still expecting to sell it? And it working?? It’s a cracking anecdote and sparks some great talking points:
- should companies with copyable products (including books, magazines and tv programmes) routinely offer a free option?
- Is the trick to lure people in with the basic product free, then upsell them to an added-value version?
- do people prefer to pay for things they value?
- would this work as well (or better?) for products in less glamorous sectors?
- Is the success of this promotional tactic repeatable or will it only work while a novelty?
In my mind it shows yet again that successful responses to market disruption are not always obvious or comfortable.
[update] NIN’s latest contrary tactic is to use bit torrent (usually the scourge of the music industry) to distribute acres of HD concert footage for fans to remix. Again – great engagement marketing
