Many of you may have noticed the hashtag that is shown at the bottom of many TV shows recently.  If you do not have It is small, unobtrusive, and has great value to the studio. Turn on USA or Comedy Central most nights and you will see a hashtag in the bottom left of the screen with the title of the show that is currently on.  Watch a trailer for a movie, and you may see a hashtag which in some way indicates the name of the movie.  Posting with the hashtag shown to you on tv allows the studios to get a better glimpse as to how their show is doing in the public’s eye, how many are actually watching the show, and allows the show better publicity.

This has been seen to get actual real results when done correctly.  Comedy Central found that through the placement of their hashtag, their roast of Donald Trump brought about a huge surge in tweets, it actually reached 4,064 tweets per second at one point.  This caused a huge PR win for Comedy Central.  So much of a win, that scribbal wrote a post about it.  The hash tag did not even use that much of the screen, as shown here:

Learning from this, this year’s roast of Charlie Sheen had the #SheenRoast hashtags prominently displayed all over the place: from the corner of the screen, to the resulting webpage, to all advertisements I saw before and after the fact, including this image found on a redirect page before the show:

They also put each of the roaster’s twitter handles underneath them when they went up to the podium, as another way to track participation, but that’s for another post.

There are even whole companies that revolve around tracking these hashtags. Hash Tracking  allows you to enter a hashtag and see how much activity revolves around that hashtag.  This could be useful to see how long people are still talking about a particular event or how popular a television show still is.  This could also be useful to studios in the long run as they could use these services to sell more premium advertising space on the more popular television shows, and allow advertisers to see what kind of people are tweeting about the shows where their products are being advertised.  At the time of writing, which is a month after Charlie Sheen was roasted, there were 52 tweets, which generated 13,814 impressions, reaching an audience of 12,989 followers within the past 24 hours according to Hash Tracking. This data shows that people are still talking about it even almost a month after it aired.

Like all things, there is a proper way to do things and an improper way.  The reason for the massive success of showing hashtags in these shows are that they are easy to recognize and easy to type.  They are also unobtrusive yet prominent when shown on the screen and they do not take away from the experience of the non-currently-tweeting watcher.  They are also on screen for long periods of time so people have time to get on twitter and tweet them or remember them later on.

There are also many ways I have seen this done wrong.  One unfortunately popular source of bad showing of hashtags seems to be with movie commercials and trailers. Assuming I had a computer on and nearby, I wouldn’t be able to type in twitter.com and post a status before the commercial is already long gone.  They flash the hashtag as fast as most other car, airline and credit card commercials flash their small text.  This is not the way to get people talking about your movie.  In fact, I forget what the hash tag is by the time I’m done typing out my tweet.  They also seem to put hashtags in movie trailers when I am at the movie theatres.  I don’t think I need to tell you, if I can’t remember the hashtag after a minute of having to load up Twitter and write my post, I am surely not going to remember it after a full movie and the time it takes to get home.

An old advertising mantra can be adapted for hashtags.  That adapted mantra is that a bad hashtag is still a good hashtag.  I find that when I go on Twitter or Facebook, some of my friends that I follow are often saying things that only make sense if you are watching what they are watching at the current moment, but they are not posting hashtags to say what they mean.  Because I know these friends I know they are talking about some sports game that is currently on.  However sports’ games do not have hashtags that they promote frequently so my friends have nothing to rally around.  These tweets do not promote the game nor their favored team with any recognition and are thus lost.  One way they can get do this is having a hashtag with the team names and the date (ex. #yanksvbluejays916  or #subwayseries2011).  Since it costs only a few seconds to create a hashtag and there are examples of sports teams doing this for the big games (ex. #NBAPlayoffs) I don’t see why we have this for every game.

Promoting the use of a hashtag can do wonders for your studio’s publicity as well as giving you an honest, easy and cheap way to get a poll of how your television show or movie is being perceived by the general public.  But in order for it to be used by the majority of the people you are trying to reach, it has to be displayed and displayed correctly.  Bad placement of a hashtag can result in at best bad tweets or at worst no tweets.

QR Codes with Your Morning Cereal

Kellogg’s has rolled out a new campaign targeting men by using QR codes. The cereal in question, Crunchy Nuts (we know), has taken a new twist on “it’s five o’clock somewhere” with “it’s morning somewhere,” specifically targeting men between the ages of 18 and 35. Users scan the QR codes on the back of cereal boxes to be taken to a mobile site that would show one of thirteen different mornings in foreign locations. Reports say that the campaign resulted in 38,000 videos played and 50,000 page views.

Facebook to Introduce Photo Filters to the Masses: Teenagers Rejoice

Facebook offered to buy Instagram, Instagram said no, and now Facebook is unrolling photo filters for users. In an effort to draw users away from relying on other photo apps, Facebook will be offering almost a dozen photo filters with varying effects – including the famous grainy, pseudo-Polaroid style Instagram is now known for. While this is a smart move on Facebook’s part, we can already hear the office photographers grumbling. We might upload an entire album dedicated to our shoes in the sunset to celebrate when the filters are released.

Social Media Unites Rugby Fans

While most think of New Zealand as an unreachable part of the earth, the organizers of the Rugby World Cup (September 9- October 23) will be utilizing all platforms to bring coverage to fans worldwide who can’t travel there for this year’s Cup. They’ve been prepping their Facebook, Flickr, and Twitter accounts for the kickoff and will be beefing up their Youtube account. At the moment, the official Facebook page has 1.2 million “likes” (and counting), and a full time Twitter crew has been established. We’re looking forward to watching clips of the New Zealand team performing the haka!

How To: Recover from a Social Media PR Disaster

In a world where everything streams real time and people are more than apt with screenshots, sometimes it’s not enough to just delete a post, especially if you’re managing multiple accounts. Still, it never helps to have a set plan to put into effect just in case stuff hits the fans. We found Mashable’s how-to guide to be a good starter when thinking about our own strategies, on top of chuckling at some of the more famous slip ups this past year.

Did we miss a bit of buzz? Let us know and join in on the conversation here!

Abercrombie Gets into a Tight Fitch-uation

Yikes. Talk about image management gone awry with puns. After reports that clothing brand Abercrombie & Fitch offered Jersey Shore reality star Mike “The Situation” Sorrentino an undisclosed sum to stop wearing their clothing, the cast interrupted their GTL routine to tell A&F to GTFO.  Today’s news announced that A&F’s stock have dropped 10%, but that could also be due to the release of their earnings report on Wednesday. The brand is now denying that they were earnest and the offer was supposed to be a lighthearted publicity stunt.

Facebook Creates a Headache for Drug Companies

Drug companies have enjoyed a certain level of protection on Facebook, as users were unable to openly comment through a page wall. Until now. In a reversal of policy, Facebook has announced that companies must have open walls starting Monday. The response has been interesting to say the least; Johnson & Johnson has announced that they will be closing four pages and AstraZeneca will be shutting down a page devoted to depression. The testy reconsideration seems to be rooted in fear of users openly posting about negative side effects or complaints. We think withdrawing is a missed opportunity for transparency and cultivating relationships.

A Fabulous Addition on Fab.com

Fab.com just added a dangerous addition to their already addictive site by updating their inspiration wall, where users pin and share design inspirations to in turn, entice and inspire others. The new upgrade facilitates faving items and creating a public profile, making users’ walls accessible to a wider range of people. Bonus?  You get $5 credit whenever you upload a picture of your Fab.com purchase. Consider us doomed.

EdgeRank Checker Pro Launches

Upping the game in checking your relevancy score, EdgeRank Checker has launched its pro version. In addition to updating its algorithms, new features include: Page Specific Recommendations, Per Post Metrics of your Page, Visual Analysis of Engagement Progress, and Best Day + Best Time + Best Keywords. EdgeRank is hoping that these new fixtures will better guide users in deciding when and how often to post, as well as what type of media best engages their audience.

Did we miss a bit of buzz? Let us know and join in the conversation here!

In the case of Snooki, a brand sending competitors’ merchandise to her in an effort to associate her with those brands is innocuous enough.  However, how far does this go?  What happens when Snooki goes from being a luxury “Poser” to an actual “X-fluent” – who can afford the brands she previously coveted?  Luxury brands would be wise to tread carefully on this subject, or risk backlash much like the racially tinged battle between Cristal and mega rapper/trend setter Jay-Z.

How do luxury brands, who pride themselves on exclusivity and refined culture, separate themselves from the luxury “posers” who gravitate towards their designer products because of the aspirational lifestyle that they represent?  This problem has been amplified of late in the luxury goods space thanks to the omnipresence of social media, particularity via Twitter and Facebook.  The open nature of the social web presents a problem to luxury brands, to whom brand image and perception are tantamount to their success.

Instead of the idea of entering the social landscape instilling fear among luxury brand managers, they should embrace this unique opportunity.

Luxury brands will never be able to stop “posers” from identifying with their brand.  In fact these consumers are already on social networks flaunting their love of a the luxury brand and creating conversation and rich media about it regardless of the brand’s presence on social media platforms. Maintaining an “official” social presence, with a targeted content and engagement strategy geared toward reinforcing the brand’s identity, allows a luxury brand to guide the conversation.  Instead of the consumers forming their own opinions without interaction from the brand, the luxury brand can create an authoritative, educational, engaging voice that enhances rather than cheapens the brand, thus countering any potential “Snooki effect”.

(Burberry’s Art of The Trench microsite is a wonderful example of this strategy.  Burberry capitalized on the trend of their consumers’ love of their iconic trench coats as well as the social media trend to post photos wearing designer goods and fashion as a means of self-expression.  The result is a sleek and interactive site that reflects the brand’s message in a young and fresh way, reflecting the changing landscape of how both “X-fluent” and aspirational consumers connect with a brand.)

(click the image for an easier-to-read version. Note that this a ‘living’ chart that I have been soliciting feedback/input on – if you have any suggestions/additions/changes, just post a comment below or at the SlideShare page!)

I’ve already noted how social media is not the same as Word of Mouth. And as the social landscape broadens, it’s simply causing more confusion as the term “social” gets slapped on just about anything to make it sound cool and relevant.

Above is a chart I’ve been working on that tries to illustrate the “social” landscape in terms of tactics and goals. You should be able to take any social touchpoint/tactic/business model (brand community, Twitter profile, blogger outreach, CGM sweepstakes) and plot them on this chart.

Essentially, this chart segments the social landscape into four quadrants… as a function of:

• CRM (social CRM or sCRM)
• Marketing (social MARKETING)
• PR (social PR)
• Media (social MEDIA)

The horizontal axis represents “owned” social channels (that you own/control) versus “leased” ones (i.e., paying a company for access to their network of consumers willing to try and/or talk about your product). The “partially owned” area represents social platforms such as Twitter and Facebook where yes, you can establish a brand presence but you don’t own any underlying data and are at the whim of the service provider in terms of metrics or even having your account suspended. The vertical axis represents the depth of engagement from very 1-to-1/personal to impersonal/3rd-person – i.e., “engagement” vs. “reach”:

In conclusion, there is nothing wrong with leveraging the social web to facilitate high-impact, quick hit consumer promotions, but at the end of the day was your goal to “reach” 1,000,000 consumers with a message about your product, or simply “acquire” a 10,000 email addresses into your company’s email database? As the social landscape broadens, marketers need to ensure that their success metrics are in line with the tactics they are leveraging. And that unfortunately can’t happen until you have properly educated the folks holding the pursestrings.

Last week you learned a valuable lesson (no, not that Oprah is queen – we already knew that). You learned, hopefully, not to underestimate the power of Word of Mouth.

To recap, for those who haven’t been stampeded in one of your locations within the past week…

You as a brand, interested in dipping you toes into the healthier side and challenging the “F” that is the center of your acronym (you are brave!), decided to launch an online coupon for your new “Kentucky Grilled Chicken” line and seed it with the ever so subtle and non-influential (ha!) @Oprah.

The coupon was for two free pieces of grilled chicken, two sides and a biscuit to anyone who downloaded and printed it within a two-day period.  By your brand’s own analysis and admission, according to your spokesperson and Ad Age however, it wasn’t the Big O who caused the premature canceling of the promotion and in-store riots, it was the WOM-driven sharing of the promotion.

According to this very informative review of Chicken-Gate in Ad Age, KFC/KGC banked on big Oprah numbers. You took O’s projections for number of coupons based on other offers from her show and then subsequently doubled them.  You estimated about 10.5 million coupons were downloaded, which you could have handled. But then, the kicker comes in – in what I can only believe to be an obvious twist of fate without unique codes and a system that can detect them, the coupons were photocopied and shared from friend to fast food loving friend.

Adding mega fuel to the grill, you apparently didn’t properly brief all your chicken purveyors.  You see, my non-Yum Brand enthusiasts, KFC is not only company-owned – there are franchisees across the country (and it is a recession). And they aren’t giving you their chicken without Colonel Sanders reimbursing them. So they do what all people trying to curb costs in a harsh economic climate would do – act completely unaware and utterly unwilling to accept the coupons. At least that is what has allegedly happened several reported scenarios that we have learned about thanks to our friends at Consumerist who are always clucking around the latest promotional scandal.

All of this adds up to a public relations disaster with consumers now pacified with a free Pepsi (really KFC, not even a drumstick or two? or better yet how about a Dr. Pepper?) left angry and annoyed.

Believing that you  hadn’t learned the Starbucks lesson in the inevitable WOM of coupons seems unrealistic. I can’t help but believe that you WANTED this mega success turned disaster of too much consumer interest to happen. The amount of precedence (see below) makes your unawareness just not seem likely.

And this could have been deemed a total and utter success, if you just would have set better rules of engagement.

Oh, KFC… If only you had handled it better – with unique trackable codes or printing system, some type of CRM integration (which would have given you more measurable results and consumer qualification for a deeper relationship marketing after the fact – building loyalty with your new grilled friends) or when the chicken hit the fan, with a better crisis plan in place.

As I am convinced you know, with downloadable coupons, the ability for it to spiral, especially in a recession and for a FULL MEAL is inevitable. Consumers live and breathe a brand throwing them a free buck.

But have no fear, KFC, a few of your friends have made just as big of a mess of things as you have. If only you had heeded their example.

DR PEPPER

Dr Pepper said it would give everyone in the country a free soda if Guns N’ Roses released its much anticipated album “Chinese Democracy” before the end of the year.  This promotion culminated in the band’s lawyers getting nasty with the brand stating that G ‘n R are “outraged at the treatment of their fans and the American public in general” after Dr. Pepper’s site couldn’t handle the traffic and repeatedly crashed when they attempted to honor their promise.

After mega backlash in the blogosphere for seeming to be unprepared for the consumer response, Dr Pepper extended the offer for a few more days, but continued to receive tons of criticism as a result of the incident. Note to Dr. Pepper: if you would have offered us all a partial refund for the album (what a let down it was) all would have been forgiven

SUBWAY

Your footlong friends Subway did away with their iconic and beloved (by sub fans, not by me) stamp loyalty program that was born way back in the 1980s after (duh) realizing that there might be some fraud going on both with consumers and internally with their franchisees with counterfit stamps and cards.

The breaking point? A roll of the stamps being sold on eBay.

I think they’re redeeming themselves with the big Chuck promotion, though. I’m all about the Save Chuck bandwagon. Maybe you could spin yours into saving Lipstick Jungle? Or Kings? I love both of those programs. I’d be happy to help. I bet Brooke Shields and Ian McShane could get behind some grilled chicken.

QUIZNO’s

In other sub disasters, earlier this year, your grilled sub friends, Quizno’s ran into some trouble when they announced their million sub giveaway (aka free sandwich) (see a pattern here?)  The problem, which seems like it might be a bit of yours also, was many of the company’s franchises didn’t participate in the “million sub giveaway” leading to mega consumer backlash.

It is unclear if they ever truly hit that magic million number.

And, the ultimate king of coupon PR disaster is of course, your friends from the land of eternal rain, Starbucks.

STARBUCKS

Trumping all of the above, your Seattle friends ran into a class-action suit after they tried a free coffee promotion way back in 2006. Starbucks emailed printable coupons for free iced coffee drinks to employees urging them to pass the coupons on to friends and family. Obviously, their friends & family hit the fabulous “FORWARD” button and the promotion got a bit out of hand.

After 38-days Starbucks announced that they would no longer honor the coupons.

So, in summary, my friends in mashed potatoes & chicken, I am suggesting that you curb this crisis with some innovation. Do a promotion that honors and activates your influencers.  Use them as the spark that fires up the grilled fire, in a positive, trackable, and controlled manner.  Rally around them to introduce your new health-conscious option.

You will spark word of mouth and have a demonstrated ROI that makes your loyalists, your new friends in all things grilled, the blogosphere, AND your franchisees happy and full.

Need an agency to help you out? This is right up our alley. Drop me a line.

Your friend in all things grilled, mashed & gravy covered,

Sarah

Quite an interesting question indeed. With Social Media being a super hyped little pair of buzz words, every agency, self-promoting fameball, or major brand who follows trendy little buzz words has jumped on the tweeting, wall-posting, super-poking bandwagon.

While they are most definitely right to be on the wagon, the deployment of a Social Media initiative is not something one embarks upon without any planning or experience. It is one thing to be a celebrity building your own online brand, but even then you have to be wary. The room for interpretation on the context of your tweets, blog posts, or status updates is a pretty big room and the elephant in it is that whether you are a brand or Demi Moore, the online world of snark just wants to see you stumble.  Just like that photograph of you on Page Six in your unflattering sweats or that consumer complaint about an experience with your brand or one of your employees that now has 50,000 views on Consumerist, dipping your toes into Social Media has to be done clearly and with purpose.

Even without the fear or risk of negative backlash, in order to make a lasting impression that positively supports your brand and that has a trajectory for growth and “viral” legs, one must have a firm foundation based on knowledge and experience, on what works and what doesn’t.

Which is why, as with every other marketing tactic or medium, having a strategy is important.  Your Social Media initiatives should be integrated with your overall brand strategy, whether you are trying to peddle a product, fameball, celebrity, or brand.  There should be goals, objectives, benchmarks, and a thought out approach that makes sense for what it is that you want to communicate and how you wish to communicate it.

In this Marketing Sherpa study, they concluded that ” Two-thirds of marketers who work for organizations that have not used any form of social media marketing or PR consider themselves “very knowledgeable” or “somewhat knowledgeable” about this emerging strategy. Their overconfidence in unproven ability can doom social media initiatives to failure.”

It is a mistake to believe that if you build it, they will come.

To believe that you can set up a YouTube channel, upload a few videos, and boom, there you have viral video is about as logical as believing that people with a video camera can create a Super Bowl commercial. Although in some cases, the former does happen, more often than not  it doesn’t and won’t.

In the same manner, it is foolish to believe that just because you create a Facebook or iPhone application and put it out in the universe, people will use it. The application directory on Facebook is flooded with applications, most of which (the most recent stat I heard was 99%) are basically inactive. Even the top Facebook applications that were previously deemed “successful” have seen a decrease in usage that averages between 15-24% with the new Facebook redesign.

While I do believe that it is possible for some brands to embark upon a Social Media plan “in house”, it is increasingly important to do so with someone taking the reigns who has Social Media experience and expertise. If you want to cut through the clutter, ward off any potential viral embarrassment, and most importantly, have a successful initiative having someone on board who knows the space – not as a user, but as a marketer, is key.

As an employee of an agency that dipped its own toes into Social Media before it was so totally trendy and part of a majority of Fortune 1000 marketing budgets, I can say that the overzealous nature of marketers to believe they fully understand Social Media is partially exciting. It is nice to have these mediums & tactics that we believe (and have for quite some time) to be viable be recognized and appreciated by the more traditional marketers.

I just urge you to remember that just like other traditional and existing non-traditional tactics, strategy is key. While a rogue effort by someone with no experience could prove to be successful, lightning rarely strikes in the same place twice.

It is best to consult with, hire, or bring to the team, someone(s) with a true passion for and expertise and experience in Social Media.

These two buzz words are best buzzed about by someone who knows how to properly buzz them.

1. VirginAmerica “Hashtag” - Allow consumers to tweet things they’ve never done but always wanted to do… that is, they are “virgins” of (for example: I’ve always wanted to skydive #VirginAmerica).  Within means, Virgin will pick winners randomly and fly them to a destination where they get to do whatever is they’ve never tried.

2. HFWIF? (How far will it fly) - Tweet a HFWIF message once per week containing some nugget of insight into Virgin’s ‘spectacular’ service. Every Twitter user who retweets is entered to win Elevate miles.  So the tweet ‘flies’ through the twittersphere… if that’s even possible to measure Then DM some code to redeem the miles.

3. TweetSeat! – Tweet your flight/seat # and locate your to-be in-flight neighbors via Twitter

4. VirginAmerica Word Association Game – Play a fun word association game for new followers (say a VA tag word – new follower can @ reply with what it first conjures in their mind) x # of people who play win something

5. Virgin = _____  - have people fill in the blank @ virgin america, give out elevate miles or free drinks for creative answers

6. New Twitter Geo-tag - What if there’s some new kind of tag for location like:

Having lunch in [Paris, France] with @myfriend

Then you can geocode it. Create a mashup like TwitterVision, but only take locations from tweets (versus users’ profile location)

7. Where in the world is…? - have people do some Where’s Waldo type of search based off of clues Virgin puts out about ‘where they are’ that day

8. Elevate Your Followers - Randomly give out Elevate miles for every x # of new followers

9. RED-commendations – Have people nominate songs and then vote for additions to the RED system

10. Conversation Starters - Have fun hypothetical seat chat sessions (playing off their in-flight conversation starters) – give away Elevate miles

To our friends at Virgin America, we’ll assume that our check is in the mail? Or at least how about some Twitter love!

You can follow us on Twitter at @Affinitive, or go to www.twitter.com/affinitive (you can follow me at @BobTroia. Thanks to @sarahashley, @patrickcourtney, and @tomkincaid!)

UPDATE: Facebook has returned to their prior Terms of Use until they can work out issues people have raised. Read more about it on their blog.

Below is a simple social media “gut check” that any organization (or even individual!) should find helpful…

Own Your Presence.

With the proliferation of online social platforms, tools, and services, how can you keep up and maintain your presence in all of these places at once? Aside from unscrupulous third-parties (or just pranksters) claiming, or “brandjacking” a brand’s presence/username/vanity url, some sites actually create one for you, whether you want it or not. Consumer review sites like Yelp!, and customer service platforms like Get Satisfaction are launching thousands of automated brand profiles to build (typically consumer-generated) content around. Some of these services are allowing brands to “claim” their pages/ids through verification… or a price.

Fortunately, some sites such as Facebook have policies in place to allow brands to report/take down fraudulent profiles/pages or reclaim a brandjacked profile.

So, what to do? You can either focus your efforts on the more popular sites/services out there, or use one of several services that will notify you when a new social network/tool launches so you can quickly claim your profile (or you can just read Mashable

Own Your Relationships.

Just to be clear – “presence” is not the same thing as engagement!

Perhaps you are thinking of “outsourcing” your word of mouth efforts to a third party word of mouth “network” consisting of tens or hundreds of thousands of consumers. If all you care about is getting your product into a bunch of people’s hands and (hopefully) generate some “amplified” (versus organic) word of mouth, these types of services can be effective…

Are these really your consumers or your target market? Is the word of mouth authentic or are these just a bunch of folks who want free stuff? Are you even directly engaging/communicating/sharing with these consumers? Do you care if competitors are able to access/engage the same users?

Big brands (especially CPG ones) are starting to realize this distinction, and have begun developing their own dedicated consumer engagement programs. While they may still rely on the help of word of mouth marketing companies to launch their programs, they want to own the relationships.

Own Your Data.

What’s the point of creating relationships if you can’t get closer to your customers and integrate your social platform touchpoints into your larger CRM initiative? (you have a CRM system, don’t you??

Given Facebook’s enormous user base (they just reached 150 million users), it’s a no-brainer for brands to “set up shop” by creating a Facebook “page”.

Here’s the rub – when you create a presence on most stand-alone, third-party social platforms (Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, “white label” social networks such as Ning, etc.) you are in control of your relationships but not your data! It’s the network effect, which these services have built their business models upon – as more people use a given service, it increases the utility and value of said service. In other words, every person you engage with via a platform must in turn create an account, thus adding to that platform’s user base (and increasing it’s value). Those 10,000 customers you got to join – you’ve just handed them over to someone else!

It’s ok to play on their turf, but maintain your own – at the very least, make sure to hook your CRM tentacles into all of your social media and word of mouth initiatives.

Hopefully, this spurs some dialog, or at the very least makes you think a bit more as you ramp up your word of mouth/social media/consumer engagement strategies for 2009 and beyond.

I stared at it yesterday for awhile thinking of all of the different ways this could be interpreted and what he really means.

No such thing as good publicity? Really?!

While what we do at Affinitive is not “publicity”, Word of Mouth often results in an organic publicity, generated in consumer to consumer conversations, and often in three-way conversations that involve consumer dialogue directly with the brand. There are many stories built upon Word of Mouth and Social Media initiatives, and most of these result in “good” publicity.

Is this reading too much into a Banksy graffiti tag? Maybe…but his messages are all delivered with an intent and purpose, so he is definitely saying something here. Is this more of a comment on the Reality TV-laden current social sphere where people like Paris Hilton exist in a swarm of paparazzi-is that his statement here?

I’d love to hear your thoughts on his message here, so leave a comment!

Side note: Fan of Banksy? Check out Streetsy’s list of 40 other street artists you should know.