Twitter and Nascar Are Getting Hitched!

It is official, Twitter has released its first television commercial. And during a Nascar race no less. While Twitter is not the first social media site to air on television (Google+ has a short spot highlighting "video hangouts") I predict it to be the most successful.). It is my opinion that Twitter is far better suited for corporate advertising than either Google+ or Facebook. With Facebook suffering after its trainwreck IPO, Twitter is pulling ahead in the race for successful social media advertising. The video below is the short teaser:

I find Twitter's strategy to be genius for many reasons; the first being that Nascar fans are not generally the type of demographic you would expect to be constantly checking the internet for Nascar updates nor constantly checking up on their favorite driver's Tweets. The generalized Nascar fan is usually stereotyped as being a beer-guzzling redneck in a pickup truck however that is not the case, according to Ken Berhnhardt of the Atlanta Business Journal, 40% of Nascar fans are females, with one and three Americans enjoying the spectator sport. And for the die-hard Nascar fan who rarely frequents the internet, Twitter is offering a olive-branch with exclusive Nascar content, almost forcing the patron to sign on if only to keep up with the latest Nascar conversation.

 https://twitter.com/hashtag/nascar

Of course we cannot forget how this will affect Facebook. There is no easy way to marry Facebook with corporations looking to advertise, despite having massive databases full of its users' personal data, Facebook isn't built for branding. Twitter however, is stepping up and proving to corporations that it has the capability to be utilized effectively with branding. AdAge recently released an article highlighting Twitter's success. 

http://adage.com/article/media/twitter-s-advertising-tv-makes-perfect-sense/235292/

In the above article, Simon Dumenco explains why this ad was such a genius move by Twitter's execs and how potent televised advertising can be to the social-media powerhouse.
I am excited to see in the coming months an increase in televised promotion for social media. It will be fascinating to watch how this field transforms.

http://blog.twitter.com/2012/06/off-to-races-with-nascar.html