There’s a great piece over on Adage this morning about a recent situation involving Discovery Channel’s purchase of the Promoted Trend – the sponsored slot that appears at the top of the trending topics list on Twitter – for Shark Week. Those who use Twitter regularly know that the list of organically occurring trends is wildly unpredictable and can range from the benign (#bieberfever) to the not-so.
Unfortunately in this case, the most popular trend for much of Discovery’s ad slot was #reasonstobeatyourgirlfriend. Not-so-benign indeed, and because Twitter is a playground for hashtag inventiveness, tweets began mashing the tags together (“She won’t shut up during #sharkweek!!! #Reasonstobeatyourgirlfriend.”)
The piece goes on to provide other examples of how unpredictable buying a Promoted Trend can be, as well as some interviews with advertisers who have been on the unlucky end of these deals. What I found heartening about their comments was how measured they were – the brands who have purchased this slot all seem to be very cognizant of the lack of control they have over social media, and also comfortable with it. While they talk about wanting to continue to work with Twitter and other social platforms to learn more and understand how to implement best practices so that they may not find themselves advertising next to domestic violence related Tweets in future, they also believe that consumers are smart enough to “distinguish between trending news topics and promoted topics.”
I’ve long felt that one of the best things to come from social media would be an increased respect from advertisers for the people to whom they are trying to sell. It’s unlikely any of the millions of Shark Week aficionados out there was upset by the proximity of #reasonstobeatyourgirlfriend, or that their overall impression of the product, or Discovery as a brand, was affected by the mashtags. I’d like to think that some of them feel more positive about Discovery and Shark Week as a result of the willingness to open the brand up to whatever was trending and simply be a part of an organic conversation.
Of course not all brands will – or, in the case of heavily regulated industries, can – be so experimental, and it will be interesting to see how the Promoted Trend evolves as a result of some of these early learnings.
