Tropicana’s Orange State Twitter Strategy
November 5, 2008 by Craig Stoltz
What an incredible. . .thing New Media Strategies, a Washington, D.C. digital marketing firm, has created for Tropicana, the orange juice brand.
It’s called An Orange America.
The. . .thing displays an aggregation of Twitter updates about either John McCain or Barack Obama, visually indicating in blue or red which terms are linked more frequently to each candidate. Click on the words across the bottom, and arcs illustrate how each term is connected to others.
It’s hypnotic, in that high-nerd kind of way.
Two observations:
1. It’s an aggressively unexpected branding venture for an orange juice company. It’s all a stretch: the “We’re not red, we’re not blue, we’re 100 percent orange” slogan. . . the “squeezing” of “fresh” Tweets. . .the idea that the conceptual connections so vividly illustrated are meaningful. [What, for instance, does it mean that there is such frequent use in Obama-centric Tweets of the words "Biden" and "Pray"?]
You can just imagine the suits at PepsiCo who haven’t been in on the fun seeing this and going “WTF?????? How does this help us move more units of Low-Pulp in Q4? Minute-Maid is killing us with those in-store promotions!”
2. And yet: Viewed holistically, An Orange America conveys the impression that Tropicana is alert, progressive and in touch with emerging cultural forces–a significant shift from what you’d normally think about a mass marketer of juice products or its PepsiCo corporate overlords.
I think it’s great to see companies doing odd and wonderful things with social media.
The use of this stuff by big companies is still immature (by which I mean in early development, not juvenile. Although it’s sometimes that too).
It’s inspiring to see the sort of creative mojo behind this thing coming from a marketing agency.
I’m guessing An Orange America didn’t cost much to develop–a fast, inspired job flipped against the wall to see if it sticks. A wing, a prayer and a fast sign-off.
How any of this relates to the core mission of moving the aforementioned units of Low-Pulp OJ is a question I leave to others.
So one point on this, not sure if I’m not “getting it” is that the text says “McCain related hits to Obama…” - with blue to the left and red to the right. Visually this is a confusing point of reference. In gfx you need a KEY, the colors should match the text - left to right. they should have either switched the colors to match or moved the text, which would seem easier. Blue-Obama, Red-McCain, right? But that isn’t the way they show it.
OK, and more points… not having a pause button on this is maddening…
Wow! for all of those Twitter users now being promoted in an ad campaign w/out their explicit consent — other than via terms of use for Twitter.