"No, I don't thank you for the fish at all" (notindetroit)
11/05/2014 at 18:26 • Filed to: marketing, twitterverse, social media, car future, auto fugure
2
2|
"No, I don't thank you for the fish at all" (notindetroit)
11/05/2014 at 18:26 • Filed to: marketing, twitterverse, social media, car future, auto fugure | 2
| 2 |
Some of you who occasionally browse the other links in the Kinjaverse may have seen !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! , the unassuming Target Teen who captured the hearts of the Twitterverse for some reason. Now it turns out that it was merely a ploy to !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! - straight from a LinkedIn post from the CEO of Breakr, the agency behind Alex's sudden cyber celebrity.
!!! UNKNOWN CONTENT TYPE !!!
Quite frankly, the implications of this are enormous, even if not exactly new. What makes this viral campaign particularly unique and interesting is the potential of a third party marketing campaign essentially hijacking someone else's meme or other body of work for marketing purposes (or any other purpose, for that matter). Both "Alex from Target" (full name Alex Chrisopher Leboeuf - yes, as in that guy Shia from Transformers/Even Stevens ) and the original Tweeter claim no knowledge of Breakr, but it's well within the realm of possibility for a marketing firm to even randomly stumble upon a tweet from, say, an intern scouring specifically for content like this and then launch it into the social stratosphere. And that's besides the fact that you have a CEO bragging about manipulating teens (still a powerful force in consumer demographics) to favorably view and retweet just about any brand they want. The ability to have that much marketing sway can't be overstated - but then again, parents who have had to content with tweens and teens begging for extra allowance to go to a concert or to buy the latest CD or clothing (and this goes for all genders/sexes) already knew that.
This also has the potential for car manufacturers to essentially manipulate brand loyalty to future consumers at an early age. Imagine, tweens and teens !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! ? It'll be pretty interesting to see just how far this "manipulation" goes, or what kind of backlash (including the inevitable future FCC regulations) stunts like this will bring in.
!!! UNKNOWN CONTENT TYPE !!!
burntartichoke
> No, I don't thank you for the fish at all
11/05/2014 at 18:37 |
|
I approve of that CEO's bragging because teens need to feel like a cog in the machine, used, useless and replaceable. Manipulate away!
SmoresTM Has No Chill (O==[][]==O)
> No, I don't thank you for the fish at all
11/05/2014 at 18:47 |
|
I'm calling BS. The fact that neither party involved in the tweet have ever heard of Breakr is fishy at best. My bet is that Breakr is claiming involvement at a marketing ploy, and likely had little to actually do with it. They've already started backpedalling, now explaining that they only "help[ed] promote the picture." And if this was a marketing idea for Target, they wouldn't let Breakr come out and make a statement. That's not how social-media marketing usually works. I think the Breakr CEO is an opportunist, and that the company will get a shit ton of exposure for this, but eventually people will figure out that this their involvement is questionable at best and they might face a little bit of backlash.
If you're going to claim that you orchestrated "on of the greatest social media experiments" of all time, and then you tone it down to just 'helping promote it,' I'm calling bullshit.