Twitter Making Inroads in the Glam World

RMN Digital | July 10, 2012 | Americas, Entertainment, Masses, Regions, Social, Social Media | No Comments

With its 140-character limit, Twitter is doing more damage to the English language than perhaps all other social networks put together, as people write absurd, broken words in their tweets to stay within the limit.

But despite its damaging nature, the I-Follow-You-If-You-Follow-Me microblogging site could woo quite a few players from the showbiz who are using it to promote their brands. Movies, TV shows and fashion shows are extensively relying on Twitter.

Movie makers are using Twiiter to attract the fans and promote their movies. “Katy Perry: Part of Me” is among the latest examples. Fans who followed @KatyPerry on Twitter were the first to hear from Katy herself about the special screening of the film.

To promote the one-day-only exclusive shows, Paramount and Twitter designated the hashtag #KP3D Movie Sneak, which Paramount also sponsored as a Promoted Trend to point Twitter’s users to a direct link to buy tickets to the advance showings.

As Paramount Pictures is among the leading entertainment companies that want to leverage new media for their shows, the company had even launched the movie trailer for its film, SUPER 8, from writer/director J.J. Abrams and producer Steven Spielberg, in partnership with Twitter.

The partnership created a new viral means of distributing a trailer to fans first on Twitter and aimed to allow them to share amongst their peer networks on a global scale.

Paramount also debuted Paranormal Activity 3 exclusively in cities where the most fans could participate in “Tweet To See It First” campaign. The film premiered in the top 20 cities with the most tweets, 3 days before the film’s global release.

How it worked? To vote, fans were asked to go to the movie’s website and select their city from a global map, which also served as the point of entry to create a tweet with a special set of hash tags that linked directly to Twitter. Once a tweet was posted, it was counted as a vote. A leader board showed the top 20 global markets in real-time where the film premiered.

A Warrior’s Heart

Among the other films, Kellan Lutz and Ashley Greene took to Twitter to release details on their first starring roles in the romantic drama “A Warrior’s Heart.”

It was said that when the stars began tweeting about the film, it caused an avalanche of interest on Twitter from Twilight fans. Within minutes of Kellan and Ashley’s tweets, thousands of fans responded with their own tweets asking where they could see the film, claimed Xenon Pictures.

Also, Nickelodeon’s SpongeBob SquarePants decided to flood the Twitter-verse with the debut of an original story created exclusively for the social networking site.

The Ice Race Cometh: A Twitter-Tale was conceived and developed for Twitter by the SpongeBob SquarePants writing team. The story was told via multiple tweets and images throughout each day to set scenes and advance the action involving SpongeBob and his friends as they prepare for The Bikini Bottom Great Sleigh Race.

Earlier, Modelinia, a multi-platform media brand where supermodels share their fashion, beauty and lifestyle secrets leaped off the web during Mercedes-Benz Fashion Week. The fashion-centric entertainment brand and brainchild of the creators of Project Runway partnered with Twitter.

And Twitter created an official hub for Fashion Week and chose to partner with @MODELINIA to report and cover The Scene, the website’s column on the people and parties who make fashion week the most stylish place to be.

Modelinia regularly updated Twitter’s fashion week ‘scene’ feed with event coverage, sightings and photos.

Thus, Twitter is slowly invading the glamour world. And it’s the beginning of an experimental marketing phase for entertainment companies. The real utility of Twitter in this segment will only be assessed when there is some measurable impact of Twitter-based campaigns.

At this stage, it’s merely a fun exercise – nothing less, nothing more. So, keep tweeting leisurely.

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