This morning, when I opened Twitter for the first time, I had 289 followers.  I made one tweet about my new lease on my house (grr) and, five minutes later, I had 12 new followers. Surprisingly, they all had something in common: they all wanted me to LOVE the new ‘Star Trek’ film. Also …
- They were all women, apparently all between the ages of 16 and 24.
- They all were following at least 900 people but only had, say, 24 followers.Â
- And they all kept saying the same things: “OMG! The new Star Trek!” and “Well, looks like I’ll have to be late to work but I saw Star Trek,” and other youthful, edgy sort of ‘ZOMG!!!111!!!’ web quips about the film.Â
Surrogates all, sent out into the Twitter ecosystem. Probably paid with free tickets or minimal compensation (or some sort of casting couch promise). If real people, I picture them curled up with their laptops tweeting away madly from scripts given to them by Paramount or some other marketing firm like telemarketers with specific times (like when show times starts on the East, Central, Mountain and Pacific time zones), sentences and more.Â
Reviews are almost all positive for the new film. Momentum has been building for sometime. Admittedly, I am as excited to see the film as anyone. So, what Paramount is doing in the Twitter space is smart — flooding it with people (or bots, which is more likely) that are saying the same things reviewers and the general consensus is saying about the film.
Look at it this way: when you’re at a party, you don’t want it to run out of liquor. Hype is the intoxicant that keeps the box office tally climbing and the patrons in the drunken, happy stupor. Besides, movies make most of their bank in the first two weeks of release or they just don’t make it. So, this makes sense and the surrogates will probably drop off before Memorial Day.
The tactic is not new. Even the magician has a plant in the crowd to help him with his gag. Surely, the recent American presidential campaign used the virtual surrogate in a way never before seen. There are more examples. So, it wouldn’t be fair to lump this in with all the wonderful advances Web 2.0 distribution makes.Â
However, to my recollection, this is the first real whack across the face with marketing I’ve had Twitter give me. The results being that ‘Star Trek’ stays a “trended” topic for the weekend (and when viewing those trends, that what you see is the marketing hype mixed in with real opinion), if not longer, and that the high people get from seeing the film sustains and bring them back for a second viewing.
With better than 9 million people on Twitter and 145 million (or more, depending on your source) on facebook, as well as a smattering of social media diaspora elsewhere, the marketing tactic makes sense. That is, after all, where the young eyeballs with all the disposable income have gone. And besides, social media is more intimate thean television, radio or what remains of print. It’s a great hook for an emotionally charged medium to make its bank.
I wanted to be mad that I’d been flooded by this marketing campaign (besides, I’m guessing they are elsewhere, too), but I was too caught up in how clever (and overt) it is.   Whether they are bots or real people, there’s power in numbers. A great majority of Twitter users will believe they are being followed by another ‘Star Trek’ fan. Every little psychological push to get us into the theater or back to the theater or just saying good things about the film will work on at least a few of us.
When you get a few surrogates latched on to your Twitter account, I’d like to know your reaction.
Popularity: 1% [?]
