You’re
a make-believe puppet character beloved to children all over the globe.
Suddenly, a U.S. presidential candidate decides he’s got a beef with you. How
do you respond? For Big Bird’s bosses at Sesame Street the answer was: buy up
ad space on Twitter and use it to poke fun at Mitt Romney and argue for PBS’
importance. Not exactly a brawl, but what do you expect from a puppet?
Here's
how it went down: last week Romney said he liked the big yellow bird but didn’t
want the government to support PBS, which airs Sesame Street. PBS bought up the
“big bird” tage on Twitter and started tweeting messages that teased Romney
(Example: “Still flummoxed we're the focus of budget cuts. Oscar lives in a
TRASH CAN”) and pushed PBS’ mantra of quality programming (“PBS is trusted,
valued and essential. See why at ValuePBS.org”).
Twitter
VP Joel Lunenfield noted how quick PBS had to be to take advantage of the
situation: Twitter memes that center on news events like Romney’s comments
spring into being, generate tons of interaction and then disappear. So Sesame
Street had to move fast or risk losing the audience for its re-messaging. Which
brings us to the ads themselves. They’re not what you’d really call ads, are
they? Not that Twitter is a platform that allows for what traditional
advertising does but even in the limited confines of 140 characters PBS chose a
very editorial message, not your typical “Buy what we’re selling” or even
“Click here for the facts.” It appears Big Bird is savvy to digital marketing.
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