Oscars Red Carpet Produces Strange Promoted Tweets

Submitted by Anonymous (not verified) on Mon, 03/03/2014 - 02:06

When it comes to real-time marketing for tonight's Oscars, so far, so good—if you are looking for bizzare results or if you work in Twitter's revenue department. The gala's red carpet run-up to ABC's three-hour telecast was filled with trending topics around the event, and brands appear to have ramped up spend on the social platform. Whether their investments are wise is up for debate. Take the hashtag, "OMG Jennifer Lawrence", which trended nationally after tonight's spill on the red-carpet. Unilever's Lipton has purchased the lion's share of impressions with Promoted Tweets, while other companies such as American Express and AT&T also bought the term. (Scroll to see examples.) The brands likely pre-purchased general terms associated with the blond starlet, such as the obvious "Jennifer Lawrence," well in advance. Though here's probably the most mind-boggling Promoted Tweet spotted so far. Because #JLaw trended nationally due to Lawrence's trip (and huge popularity), business-to-business firm Clio (not to be confused with the CLIOS, Adweek's sibling signature advertising awards franchise) paid for impressions that had absolutely nothing to do with its cloud software for lawyers. The Vancouver, B.C.-based company is advertising its tech conference—which doesn't take place until September. #WTF? And T Mobile marketers bought Twitter promos—presumably in actual real-time—for the #If Leo around the topic of Oscar nominee Leo Dicaprio. But the cell service's message seemed completely off point, pitching a contest to win a Samsung Galaxy. And these efforts evidently are not cheap. While outsiders typically look at Promoted Tweets as inexpensive ad buys, per a digital agency exec, that's not the case. "You can burn through a big budget pretty quick if you are not careful," the exec recently explained. So whether or not marketers perform well, Twitter investors can probably already feel like they've had a winning night.