Risky Business
So today i found a very interesting article that talks about a couple of advertisers jumping on the Charlie Sheen wagon and using it to promote some of their products. Ad.ly a company based out of L.A. works with a lot of different celebrities and brands to advertise via twitter. While some of their clients include Toyota and Microsoft, Ad.ly believes that the true marketability comes from celebrities that have a high following on twitter. “…celebrities are currently the ideal brand endorsers in terms of social media because of the influence they have, their fan loyalty and, as he put it, “their ability to move the needle.” While most people are quite critical of twitter being used as an advertising tool, Ad.ly has found great success bringing active famous twitter users and their fans together while being able to push out products that the celebrities like and actually use. What I really like about Ad.ly is that they do not tweet for their clients, they try to stay away from that because it does not give them the originality. Plus I don’t want to hear from them, I want to hear from the person who’s twitter account it is. “…advertisers are good at writing sales copy. They’re not good at writing organic tweets in different celebrity’s voices.” Often the tweets come as casual messages from the celebrity: “Check this out” or “‘I think this is cool.” While celebrities are growing in this area of the industry, I don’t know how many brands actually want to associate themselves with Charlie Sheen. The guy is funny and all, but obviously he has some deep issues that he needs to resolve first. I don’t know if I would want my Ad for “Denny’s Family Restaurant” associated with Tiger blood and Strippers.
