Alternative Twitter Advertising

Twitter followers of Manchester United’s Rio Ferdinand were treated to a series of unusual tweets recently. It appeared that the footballer had taken up the delights of knitting…

These first tweets were in fact teasers for a marketing campaign for Snickers UK which would be revealed in the final tweet of the campaign.

This twitter campaign, using Rio Ferdinand and some other UK celebrities, was one channel used to deliver the marketing message. The message was also pushed out over TV adverts and other media.

Using social media to promote products is certainly not a new idea, and using celebrity endorsements has a long history as well. In this example however it was interesting to see that the campaign didn’t use any specific twitter advertising features such as promoted tweets and trends. The campaign instead used the built in social media features to reach the celebrities existing audience.

What are your thoughts about using twitter for celebrity endorsements like this?