DogBalls Blog

flickr photo of the day...

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Originally uploaded by motionid

Twitter as WOM advertising

twitter
Originally uploaded by mil8

I've blogged and tweeted about Twitter in the past but thought it was worthy of a blog post now that it's getting more and more attention in the mainstream press. You see, Twitter can best be described as a micro-blogging platform that limits comments to just 130 characters that is transmitted (pulled, not pushed) to your social-graph.

The power of Twitter for marketers is that this platform is actually "word of mouth" (WOM) on steroids. WOM is the best, most effective form of advertising due to the trust-factor built in. Like a great restaurant, tell a friend. With Twitter, you can tweet it ... your WOM to 1 to 5 people suddenly gets 'whispered' to a network that can average 100 and be as high as 25,000 strong.

Smart marketers recognize these thought-leaders and provide them with access to their products AND participate in the dialogue by starting their own twitter accounts, thus encouraging the community to discuss their brand.

Like what you've read here? Tell a friend to follow me! ;-)

flickr photo of the day

Rush (II)
Originally uploaded by BURИBLUE

Ironman Marketing

  Robert Downey Jr red carpet interview 
  Originally uploaded by spinal_faun

Watching Ironman today was a rush. Great flick and there are far more coherent reviews of the movie than I can provide. "Nice balance of action, romance, fun and humor. A+" - Dogballsblog.com

I'd like to touch on the tremendously fun elements known as product placement (the art-form of deal-making that occurs when products find their way into a film.) Sometimes the art-form takes a tragic turn and it becomes awkward and forced ... yet other times it just seems to "work." In this case, I think the product-placement was obvious and yet, it seemed to wink to itself and say, WTF... we're here to have fun ... and it it paid off.

The Audi R8, A5 and Q7 were prominently featured. As was the Tesla electric super-car and the Rolls Royce. Burger King felt forced but probably because after the protagonist escapes three months of captivity, he makes two requests: sex and a burger (and not in that order.)

Going a little deeper than your average product-shots, there were several mentions that were tied to Conde Nast titles. Both were tied very closely to story-lines and I thought it to be very interesting because it was not "over the top." Typically magazine titles used as product-placement appear as "headlines" floating across the screen to add a real-world element to the fictional story-line. In this case, Wired was mentioned during the protagonist's back-story and he has a romance with a Vanity Fair writer trying to get a story out of him.

As media attention continues to be fragmented and TiVo eats away at response and recall rates, product-placement will continue to pay big dividends. Especially when brands tie themselves to big powerhouse films like Ironman. As a marketer, I enjoy a good product tie-in as much as a big movie-screen explosion!