One of the great things about social media is that it let’s you meet your brand’s fans.
The ones who think your brand is just awesome!
So much so that it may occupy a disproportionate amount of their brainspace.
We all have brands that we simply looove. I, for example, am a superfan of Kerrygold butter. I haven’t yet liked them on Facebook but I would. It’s just amazing that butter. No, really. I mean, just look at it.
And it’s very tempting to spend all your time talking people who you KNOW love you. Of course it is. We’re only human.
The danger is that we will fixate on this geyser of adoration and affirmation and forget that our real task is to convert the non-avid lovers. The ones who currently don’t really give a fig.
And I fear this is one of the attractions of social media to marketers.
Not to blow our horns (cue: blowing of own horns!) but looking back on it, I think this idea we did for Wheat Thins a few years back was a good demonstration of how you can amplify your existing fanbase’s love to reach the non-avid user and so create new love.
(Blowing of horns, geysers of adoration, creating new love. Dr. Freud to reception!)
One, the shot of the crew plodding across the sand with our talent shouting on the megaphone just makes me laugh. That’s exactly how it happened.
And two, Starla’s ever so poised and lady like reaction to what must have been quite a surprise in a situation that must have been quite stressful. She was at the beach with her child. Her friend had helped set her up for the surprise.
Turns out it takes a bit more than a surprise prank camera crew on a beach to rattle Starla Little!
She is married to a Navy Seal. So perhaps that’s not a coincidence.
On Monday night one of our new spots for Wheat Thins aired during the People’s Choice Awards on CBS. And minutes later, Wheat Thins was a trending topic on Twitter.
We’d kind of hoped for something like this to happen so it was extremely gratifying that it actually came to pass.
Social media can be a lot of fun.
Cheers to all involved in this very exciting campaign.
We recently shot a second series of Twitter-based ads for client Wheat Thins. One of my personal favorites was one where we confronted @Tzeoderek from Portland Oregon who had expressed doubts about the veracity and authenticity of our original batch of commercials on Twitter. He had the temerity to call them “uber fake”.
Well, Derek sure believes in us now!
His reaction was priceless. And it all made the cut. Thanks for playing along Derek. You were money. As was our intrepid talent Brian Palatucci who winged it very nicely.
This commercial is airing tonight during the People’s Choice awards.
We at The Escape Pod couldn’t be more pleased with the reaction to our new Wheat Thins campaign.
I’m a 7K plus twitter veteran. I love twitter. Not every does. Not everyone gets it. I have also been blogging for years now. I love social media. To me it’s fun and stimulating. I am one of those millions of busy online worker bees who just can’t shut the f**k up. I help spread the online pollen, if I may ;-)
So the idea of combining video and twitter in a fun way had huge appeal for me personally.
Every time we have done prank video there is ALWAYS a certain segment that is understandably leery and suspicious. They think that what we shot COULDN’T be real. And that it’s fake. Fair enough. I can understand that. Advertising’s biggest problem, in my estimation, is that it’s usually just irrelevant bullshit. So everything we do is viewed with a certain amount of suspicion. Even when it’s real.
This time round the online detectives have been quick to point out that one of our tweeters, Tabitha, only had one tweet on her twitter page. And that was her pro-Wheat Thins tweet. I know what they mean. I’d be suspicious too. But I can explain.
This is how we tracked down these people. Initially we hired a team of researchers to comb twitter every day for the most promising sounding pro Wheat Thins tweets all over the country. We wanted the mentions to be comparatively recent (may/april) so that people could check them out online and verify them for themselves. Because i knew they would!
As we got close to production of these budget realities dictated that we limit ourselves to tweets in the LA area so we could shoot more films. Which cut down our pool of candidates. The researchers then suggested expanding our search to include Facebook mentions too. But I wanted to keep it to Twitter to keep it focused.
So we did. Or we thought we did.
When we were near finishing the edits on these videos I searched all their Twitter accounts and nearly had a heart attack when I searched Tabitha’s twitter home page and found it empty! WTF!!!! I went ballistic. What the hell happened???
We then found out that Tabitha was a facebook mention that had gotten confused as a tweet by the researcher and slipped through.
Now to those of us involved in the production who WEREN’T social media nuts this wasn’t viewed as a big deal. But it was to me. Oh yes! I recall shouting loudly and uttering expletives. And I just knew someone like me would stumble upon this and blog about it. Just as I would. And sure enough they have.
Hence Tabitha’s sole tweet on her Twitter account. When we knocked on her door we actually asked her if she had “tweeted” the statement she had in fact posted on Facebook. You’ll notice she doesn’t disagree. She did say it. Just not on Twitter.
And in a related matter, our air guitar hero Dan REMOVED his tweet (on the advice of his agent perhaps?) precipitating yet another heart attack in my part. He put it back but if you look at the date it was last week. (UPDATE: NO HE DIDN’T. SORRY DAN/BJORN!) This also nearly broke my heart. After all our efforts, and doing this is not easy, people would think these were staged. And they weren’t. I can’t imagine staging something like this. For the simple reasons that it would be no fun and you simply can’t fake honest surprised reactions. Unless you have de Niro in your fake prank.
People talk endlessly about the need for transparency online. Well, there you have it folks. The whole story.
We did something new here. And it was largely out of our control. There will be glitches along the way. I will have a few heart attacks. But what’s new?
I hope this clears this up to everyone’s satisfaction. And thanks for all the online mentions and tweets.
Keep an eye out for that yellow van! You could be next.
always heartening to read the unedited feelings of the masses towards one’s work. back in the day we were happily insulated from the reactions of consumers to our TV spots. when i worked on beer i used to sit in sports bars to gauge reaction to my TV spots. no more!
the youtube peanut gallery takes care of that. i looooove reading the comments on youtube. it’s like hearing all the people shouting at the TV as they watch your spot. it’s initially a bit chilling but once you develop a thick skin for it, it becomes hilarious.
check this out to read some of the comments to our funky new work for client Wheat Thins. it’s a mob scene.
And search “wheat thins” on twitter to see the reaction we’re getting there. again, beyond our control but kind of what we’d hoped would happen.
and here’s some kind words about the campaign from The New York Times’ ad columnist Stuart Elliott.
social media. it just needs a good spanking and it behaves exactly as you’d like it to! winking smiley face made of punctuation.
We very recently shot and edited this campaign for client Wheat Thins. In case you’re from foreign as they used to say in England, Wheat Thins are an American snack that is universally loved here in the USA. As the name suggests, it’s a wholesome wheat-based unit of yum.
Wheat Thins’ problem is, if anything, over-familiarity. The reverse of the awareness problem. It’s available everywhere and it’s been around forever. But there is a lot of love for the brand. How do we know this? Because we found it flowing like a torrent on Twitter. While coming up with ideas for Wheat Thins we had the idea of searching Twitter to see what, if anything the Twits were saying about Wheat Thins. We were stunned to find hundreds of unprovoked declarations of undying love for the brand. Some were just slavish “I love Wheat Thins so much i would die for them” . Some were more witty. Some were just odd.
As anyone who tweets regularly knows, the one thing you DON’T expect is for your random tossed-off utterances to have any consequences. That’s the ONE THING you can be certain of. Until now that is!
We selected a random selection of pro-Wheat Thins tweets and slyly tracked down the Tweeters. We then arrived in a van, A TEAM style, and confronted them with their tweets. We thanked them and gave them a gift based on their particular tweet and left basically. Leaving stunned tweeters in our wake. As you can imagine it was enormous fun to shoot. And in case you’re wondering, we usually had the assistance of a facebook friend or otherwise contacted family member to help us set up our marks. I’m always amazed at how easy it is to set up people for pranks. Don’t trust your loved ones!
Among our victims we had a Mom (and wife of a Navy Seal), an air guitar champion (i know, he sounds casted. he wasn’t), a dude in a coffee shop (set up by him mom. hi Beverly!) and a trainee nurse. it was completely random. And no it wasn’t faked. These were actual tweets. That’s what made the whole thing fun: the element of the unknown. The uncontrollable.
We hope you like them as much as we do. Kudos to fearless Wheat Thins clients Jim Low and Beth McMorrow who toughed it out with us in the white video bus that didn’t really have a whole lot of video to be honest. But great A/C! Thank you driver Gary!
Tabitha
and Tim
CREDITS:
AGENCY:
Managing Director: Norm Bilow
Creative Director: Vinny Warren
Creatives: Allan Stevenson/Jimmy Olson
Exec. Producer Kent Kwiatt
Production Co: SMUGGLER
Exec. Producer: Brian Carmody
Director: Renny Maslow
Producer: Shelby Ross
Editorial: Whitehouse Chicago
Editor: Matt Walsh
Asst. Editor: Matt Jameson
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