I’m always fascinated by how social media interacts with the physical world and vice versa. Two principle uses of social media are promotion of events and products. A fusion of these ideas is a ‘Twitter shop’ where Twitter is used to promote a product by using tweets as a currency.
At the UK’s first Tweet shop tweets were used to purchase packets of Special K Cracker Crisps. Customers could obtain the crisps when they posted a Tweet about the product. The pop-up shop has now closed but generated Kellogg’s plenty of PR via blogs, social media and of course tweets like the one below.
At a #London pop-up store, #SocialCurrency bought Special K Cracker Crisps with tweets to “#tweetshop” bit.ly/QyrYit
— The Center(@fsuhmc) October 20, 2012
You could argue the idea is a ‘bribe’ to people to plug a product but I consider it a fair exchange. The brand obtains PR, online word of mouth across Twitter and feedback on their product and the consumer gets to sample the product for free.
Would you tweet in return for a free product? Let me know in the comments below.