Thursday, July 30, 2009

Sign Of The Social Media Apocalypse: Twitter TV Ads

I was watching cable last night (OK, I wasn't actually listening, just watching from corner of my eye while I surfed online), and low and behold a commercial actually caught my eye. It had something to do with home tech help, and looked vaguely familiar brandwise. At the end, "Twelpforce" flashed on the screeen with the URL http://twitter.com/twelpforce.

My first reaction was: is Twitter really advertising?!!! Do their VCs know about this?!! (harken back to scores of pre-revenue dot coms in '99 spending their way out of biz with stupid TV commercials) My attention quickly went back to my real focus -- my pc -- and I visited http://twitter.com/twelpforce. I realized that it was one of Best Buy's Twitter profile pages. Get it? Help + Twitter = Twelp...

Then I was truly dumbfounded: why the heck would a brand spend TV dollars to get people to go to another company's web site? (as an aside: if the click-throughs on online ads are supposedly bad, then the click-through on TV ads must be really bad...really, really bad) OK, I'm not that dense and do understand their rationale, but I have to ask again: why the heck would you send a few people to a new service brand (after you've spent millions promoting Geek Squad) whose presence resides on another company's web site???

Last note: I absolutely REFUSE to 'follow' the Twelpforce. I like good marketing; this is not good marketing.
Posted by Richard Jalichandra at 7:44 AM
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5 comments:

  1. Don't agree... The point of that spot is not to send you to twitter but to get you to associate personal assistance with Best Buy. I also think that Best Buy probably isn't that concerned with you following them on twitter. However, if you believe that Best Buy is a place to get personalized service, you're more likely to buy products from them (and service) and if them having one of their corp dudes tracking twelpforce and responding to questions can drive that perception, then they've won. It's genius because it's early and it's above the noise if only a bit.
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  2. First movers are often misunderstood. You don't need to follow if you don't want to. That is the beauty of all of this.
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  3. You don't have to follow us, you can just ask us questions.
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  4. I agree with Jeff, it's one part marketing gimick and one part service vehicle.

    I think it's kind of a cool concept that on my way to a Best Buy store I can post "@twelpforce Looking at buying a laptop 12in screen, blue ray, required" and by the time I'm at the store I have feedback from knowledgable people across the country.

    Just my $0.02
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  5. Hopefully Twelpforce is more customer-centric than BestBuyCMO
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