Twittering As The Ultimate Ad Vehicle

The more I twitter (tweet?) the more I see its value for advertisers. Not for consumers, mind you, because your average Joe has no need for a service that basically replicates the group email or Facebook status update.

But for advertisers of a certain bent, it may prove to be a windfall.

Allow me to explain: The most successful uses of Twitter I’ve seen are tweets from reporters who are “embedded” at actual events, e.g. Hillary Clinton’s hotel room the night of a primary or the Giant’s locker room when the won the Super Bowl.

That makes sense, because Twitter’s gift is that it allows you to follow the conversations and thoughts of people who don’t want to hear from you. Ergo, I can sign up to receive Katie Couric’s tweets as she sips wine with the Clintons and she doesn't need to agree to receive mine. This gives me the illusion of being an “insider” and having information that my friends don’t, while relieving Couric of the burden of listening to me drone on about advertising.

Now like most new media, this isn’t something that works for every brand. But if your brand has some sort of connection to an event (e.g. you’re Reebok and it’s the NCAA Final Four basketball tournament)—even a remote one (e.g. you’re Coke and it’s Oscar night) and you can find someone whose tweets would be relatively insightful/entertaining to more committed fans, then you’ve got yourself a blockbuster idea. I mean what if, say Coke had gotten Perez Hilton into the Oscars and he was tweeting about the show for them. That would certainly draw a crowd. Even more relevant would be Reebok getting someone like Charles Barkley (Barkley could read the phone book and make me laugh) to tweet about the Final Four.

And that’s all the free thinking I’m giving away today.