Say My Name
In the penultimate episode of “Breaking Bad” Bob Odenkirk’s Saul Goodman character finds himself, along with the central character Walter White, looking for a new identity to escape justice. While Walter is still attempting to find a way to influence events from his new circumstances, Saul Goodman is more glib: “best scenario for me is I’m managing a Cinnabon in Omaha in three years.”
Breaking Bad is not the ideal setting for product placement. Denny’s would not exactly celebrate the idea that two characters might eat there after disposing of a murder victim in a vat of acid (Chili’s and Olive Garden flat out turned down the show when asked for permission to film there).
But in the spirit of no-such-thing-as-bad-publicity, being mentioned in the windup of one of the more critically acclaimed shows in history is not the worst thing for Cinnabon. After all, companies usually spend quite a bit of money to get someone to say their name.
Especially given that the tie-in was introduced by a character known for comic relief, and in a context not directly related to violence (no hardware manufacturer would be quick to claim association with the box-cutter used in grisly fashion in season 4) it really is not bad publicity.
And so it was that Cinnabon was able to playfully interact with fans of the show on Twitter on the night of September 22, 2013. Here are some highlights:
Tight Tight Tight
There are three excellent aspects to the Cinnabon social media program as seen in the reaction to the Breaking Bad mention.
Active
- Monitoring
- Full Empowerment
- Consistency
Monitoring
The first thing to point out is that the social media team from Cinnabon was on it Sunday night, as the original mention on “Breaking Bad” happened, and reacting to tweets in real time. Social media was being monitored.
At the very least that requires that there be a social media team active at that time. It might be luck (the manager could be a Breaking Bad fan) or via alerts (generated from Social Media Monitoring) or could be because the account and keywords are monitored 24x7.
If we do not want this kind of good, timely social media buzz to be the product of luck, then one of the other two states must be in effect: either software agents or human agents are monitoring social media in real time and alerting responsible parties to mentions.
Full Empowerment
Once aware of the mention, the social media team was empowered enough to act on this, in real time, without worrying about associating the brand with a fictional criminal. This is not trivial. Some social media teams would not be allowed to stray from certain approved responses.
This case called for latitude. Even the most detailed social media policy guides may not have an entry for what to do when mentioned by a fictional TV persona in conjunction with hiding from law enforcement.
In this case, the team rolled with it, and the results were lots of favorites, retweets, and genuine appreciation.
Consistency
The reaction was consistent with the originating message. The mention on the TV series was done in the form of a joke, and the message that the Cinnabon social media team used in response was also a joke.
Secondly, it was consistent with past messaging. Cinnabon takes the attitude that its food is irresistible. So who can blame Saul for wanting to work there?
It was consistent with language, again from the originating source (#BakingBad was a great hashtag) and with brand terminology (#BreakingBon - unfortunately misspelled in the example tweet above as #BrekingBon uses the Bon nomenclature used often by Cinnabon).
Impressively, it was consistent among Cinnabon handles, notably here the President of Cinnabon, Kat Cole, via her handle @KatColeATL.
No More Half Measures
Now we look at a relatively simple way this could have been more effective.
Much is made of the “you can still dunk in the dark” tweet that Oreo put out during the New Orleans blackout of the Superbowl in 2013.
There is no denying the power of that tweet, but what made it so powerful was that it went beyond a clever turn of phrase and actually looked like a full blown Oreo ad.
This was not a coincidence or accident. As detailed in Business Insider (http://www.businessinsider.com/oreos-super-bowl-power-outage-tweet-was-18-months-in-the-making-2013-3) Oreo had already been actively producing content on daily basis for social media. Images were produced on a daily basis that was relevant to trending topics of the day. There was a clear look to these daily image, complete with consistent font and imagery.
The same team and technique was available for the Superbowl. When the lights went out in the Superdome in New Orleans, the mechanism was in place to produce full content, not just commentary.
Imagine if the Cinnabon team could have done the same, perhaps with an image like this:
Hey, Saul - we’ll even let you color the frosting #BreakingBon
It takes the extra work of having layered images available with look book guidelines at the ready, and someone good enough with image manipulation to use it. But that should be part of any large marketing team’s real time marketing toolbox and skill set.
Make sure it is part of yours.
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