TV Proposes While Twitter Disposes

We have become familiar with the concept of 'ambush marketing,' the purchase of advertising around an important TV event like the Olympics by companies that are not official sponsors. The advantage derived is that those companies benefit from the event's brand halo at a much lower cost.

An extension of that strategy is now becoming evident on Twitter and might well be termed 'covert communicating.'Major national or international events are a powerful forum for delivering ideas, brands, policies while enhancing celebrity. Being positioned as the central figure on a global stage confers authority which can be converted into support for whatever is being marketed, be it a policy or a product.

Opponents, or those hoping to grab a little reflected glory are now using Twitter to support or undercut the promoted theme - or simply attract attention to their own offering. Given the numbers of people now watching TV accompanied by computer or mobile phone, having a Twitter strategy to bolster one's TV message while offsetting that of one's competitors or denigrators has become essential. At the same time, those determined to counter the influence of those who managed to garner 'free' attention can do so by surrounding the broadcast with an array of social media campaigns that can influence the reaction to whatever message is being delivered.

Convergence is not a new concept but many companies remain either too siloed, too concerned about the ROI or too cautious to experiment. Advocates of social or traditional media are missing the point if they become too consumed with one or the other. The reality is that multi-channel and platform communications strategy is no longer a speculative undertaking but an essential element in effectively making one's self heard. JL

Cecilia Kang reports in the Washington Post:

In just the past couple of years, Twitter has become an essential companion to live television, including the Super Bowl, presidential debates and the Academy Awards.
On television, President Obama spent a commercial-free hour delivering his State of the Union speech. But on Twitter, the nation’s biggest lobbying groups and corporations found a megaphone to place ad money and promote their views.

The National Rifle Association, AARP, Chevron and Microsoft bid for top placement of 140-character tweets aimed at spreading their policy and political positions and marketing their products.

Ahead of the event and during it, they competed in Twitter’s behind-the-scenes advertising auction that gave prominent display to winners who wanted to get their tweets in front of the legions of users who were searching for information related to Obama’s speech Tuesday night.

The NRA’s Institute for Legislative Affairs won the most coveted keyword — “#SOTU” — so that people who searched for that term saw the gun group’s “sponsored tweet” pop up at the top of their personal feeds: “@BarackObama gives good speeches, but how would his gun policies actually work? Don’t be fooled by #SOTU.”

AARP nabbed “#POTUS” and “#JOBS,” and users looking for those words saw their message to protect retirees: “Keep your word, Mr. President. Protect seniors. No Social Security cuts!”

Microsoft was fast on its feet to promote its search engine, Bing, by winning the search phrase “deserve a vote,” which Obama repeated several times in a plea for gun legislation.

The shift in advertising to Twitter illustrates the company’s evolution from disorganized online soap box for global dissidents and celebrities into a media powerhouse that is elbowing its way onto Madison Avenue and influencing top thought leaders in the nation’s capital.

As the most popular forum for side commentary, the site has drawn advertisers looking to spread their messages, and at much cheaper costs than on TV and in newspapers.

“Twitter is the great leveler. . . . Nothing is more effective than a message that compels response or affirmation,” said Abram Olmstead, a manager for the U.S. Chamber of Commerce’s digital communications team.