We all work in social media, so this may strike some as an odd question, but we’ll ask it anyway: don’t you just hate promoted tweets?

If you answered “No, I love them; they provide essential information on goods and services that I may or may not purchase,” then you must work in marketing. If you answered, “They are kind of annoying, aren’t they,” then you’re…everybody else.

Twitter has obviously become a key promotional platform in the past couple of years, but it wasn’t always this way—and some longtime users aren’t too happy about it. In fact, as The Wall Street Journal puts it, these young ruffians are all about “subvert[ing] the corporate vibe.” Twitter spokesman Jim Prosser called it “the eternal battle people have over hipsterdom.”

Really?

We never joined the “weird Twitter” club (sue us), which for the most part is all about making strange jokes rather than assaulting brands. But we do know that some comedy professionals use promo tweets as a platform for jokes, because duh:

Shut up nerd. RT @Staples: Back to school season is right around the corner!

— rob delaney (@robdelaney) August 4, 2013

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Last week our sister site AllTwitter reported on a story that serves as a great example of a well-meaning social media marketing campaign that got a little too aggressive. Harping on the fact that it supposedly uses only “antibiotic-free” meat in its food, the Panera Bread chain’s team created a campaign pushing the message that only lazy farmers use antibiotics on their animals. This included a micro-site, a Facebook tab, and the satirical @EZChicken Twitter feed (which was more than a little over the top despite some pretty cool art direction).

We get where they were going with this project and the tagline “The Road to Delicious Is Antibiotic-Free”, but it’s hard not to conclude that any farmers who use antibiotics in any circumstance are not very good at their jobs—and that implication extends to nearly every farmer in this country. Now who supplies Panera with the meat for its sandwiches?

The response from the animal husbandry community wasn’t so positive:

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Sharing the color of your panties with the Twitterverse will make you feel liberated, independent, sassy and sexy! At least that’s what Hanes‘ new Undercover Color campaign would like you to think.

After selecting my hue from the color wheel provided on the campaign’s website, UndercoverColor.com, I am brought to a page that applauds my selection. “You’re wearing red underwear. Bold Move,” it says. “Are you brave enough to tell the world?”

I’m not so sure “brave” is the right word. It should realistically read something like: Are you vain/silly/bored enough to believe the world cares what color your panties are, and would be impressed by your oh-so-brazen and sassy over-share? Nonetheless, in the name of research, I press on.

I am then prompted to select a pre-composed tweet by clicking on tiles, each of which boasts a picture of something red, including a rose, a pair of red pumps, a melting cherry popsicle, and a tile made completely of red glitter. One of the tiles features text that reads, “Super Awkward.” Obviously, I click on that one first. It flips over to expose the corresponding pre-composed tweet, which reads, “I’ve got a scarlet secret,” which, to me, kind of sounds like the tweeter has a seriously inflamed rash. But it did say it would be awkward, so I assume the rest of the tweets must be better.

Wrong. Read more

In case you’re one of the sad, deprived few who missed SyFy‘s latest motion picture masterpiece, Sharknado, you may be wondering, “What exactly is a Sharknado?” Allow me to enlighten you: Despite the potentially misleading name, it is neither a shark that behaves like a tornado, nor a tornado that behaves like a shark, but is, in fact, a tornado that forms over the ocean, sucking countless man-eating fish into its swirling vortex and dropping them willy-nilly upon the streets of unsuspecting Los Angeles.

Upon viewing the film with friends, the first thing I did — once I had come down from an unprecedented fit of gleeful laughter, which began during the opening sequence and persisted through what is perhaps the greatest ending of any movie ever — was to share my transcendent experience with my social media friends and followers. And I was far from alone.

On the night it first aired (July 11), the campy action film generated 318,232 tweets during broadcast, and peaked at 5,000 tweets per minute, making it the most-tweeted TV program of the night. Helping to fan the wildfire was the participation of big-name Twitter-users like Wil Wheaton, who tweeted a Vine counting down to the premiere to his 2.4 million followers, and then proceeded to live-tweet the movie. Read more

This weekend we moved a step closer to The Singularity as the world’s two largest PR/marketing/advertising groups announced plans to join, creating one unstoppable media megalith that will easily pass WPP to become the biggest, most powerful group in the history of big, powerful groups.

Together, Publicis and Omnicom include agencies from Saatchi & Saatchi and Leo Burnett to BBDO and DDB Worldwide.

On Saturday and Sunday the two companies confirmed the move and released statements from co-CEOs Maurice Levy and John Wren, who made a public appearance together; Levy said the merger started as “almost a joke” six months ago. One thing the pair didn’t do was secure the Twitter handles @OmnicomPublicis or @PublicisOmnicom, a fact that allowed a couple of industry wise guys to have a bit of fun in the wake of the announcement:

All your base are belong to us. C’est moi.

— Publicis Omnicom (@PublicisOmnicom) July 27, 2013

Bring it, bitch. @PublicisOmnicom — Omnicom Publicis (@OmnicomPublicis) July 28, 2013

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Chipotle‘s official Twitter feed, @ChipotleTweets, appeared to have been hacked when it started sending out strange, seemingly random messages this past Sunday, like:

Hi sweetie, can you please pick up some lime, salt, and onions? twitter

— Chipotle (@ChipotleTweets) July 21, 2013

Mittens13 password leave

— Chipotle (@ChipotleTweets) July 21, 2013

Later in the day, the company claimed there had been a “problem” with its Twitter account, and apologized to its followers for the confusion: Read more

Hooray everyone! We have a new prince! Release the publicists!

With #RoyalBaby trending for most of the day on Twitter (along with some reference to Buckingham Palace, the Royal family, or David Cameron), it’s only fitting that marketers raced to social media to try and tap into the excitement with some sort of play on the big news.

Out in front as they were for the Super Bowl was Oreo with a cookies-and-milk joke. Cute. OK, we’ll take that because that’s what they do. Also, and making perfect sense, Pampers had a sweet clip about how every baby is special to their mom and dad. Check it out after the jump.

Then there’s the desperate madness that happened. Hostess did something weird with a man cradling a Twinkie in a blanket that fell as flat as their big re-launch day. MAC smeared some lip gloss. Lululemon… I don’t know. And Starbucks (UK) slapped some crowns on coffee cups. Really, I can’t. Buzzfeed has a round up if you need more. But really, you don’t.

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Alec Baldwin on “Late Night with David Letterman”

The Daily Mail has removed the story it posted stating that Alec Baldwin’s wife Hilaria was tweeting during James Gandolfini’s funeral on Thursday. After further investigation, it turns out that the reporter, George Stark, who’s in Los Angeles, didn’t take the time difference between the East and West Coast into account. The tweets actually went up after the funeral.

The Daily Mail has apologized “for any distress caused,” but the Kraken was already released and Baldwin had some apologizing of his own to do.

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Paula Deen sure knows how to stir up trouble, doesn’t she? A recent lawsuit filed against Mrs. Ham-in-the-Face by the manager of her Savannah restaurant contains more than a few barely believable allegations, among them that she and her husband often used the n-word and that:

…white employees were free to use the customer bathroom at the front of the restaurant, but black employees had to use the facilities in the back.

A disgruntled employee stretching the truth? Possibly! But Deen landed herself and her brand in even more hot water today. While answering lawyers’ questions about her supposed desire to host an event catered by an all-black wait staff dressed in Antebellum-era outfits, she described a dreamy “plantation” wedding she wishes she’d planned herself:

The whole entire waiter staff was middle-aged black men, and they had on beautiful white jackets with a black bow tie…That restaurant represented a certain era in America…I would say they were slaves…I remember saying I would love to have servers like that…but I would be afraid somebody would misinterpret.

Now how could anyone misinterpret that?

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Most 19-year-olds don’t get a chance to visit outer space, leave their pet monkeys stranded in Germany or cruise the California highways in a leopard print Audi 8 at speeds high enough to draw warnings from local cops and former NFL players.

In some ways, however, Justin Bieber is just like every other American boy; he loves his mommy enough to buy her flowers every Mother’s Day. More specifically, he loves 1-800-Flowers, and he wants his 40 million Twitter followers to know all about it.

Everybody knows I love #MyMom! @1800flowers Mother’s Day is on Sunday! Love your momma! Love u @pattiemallette – http://t.co/SGLffn0bo2

— Justin Bieber (@justinbieber) May 9, 2013

No one should be surprised to learn that Bieber has a contract with 1-800-Flowers, but you won’t see any mention of that fact in his promotional tweets. The Biebs is only the most prominent of a slew of celebrities endorsing brands on Twitter and other social media forums with no disclaimers in sight. Kim Kardashian, for example, often makes five figures for a single branded tweet but never discloses her relationships with her sponsors.

That might change soon if the FTC has its way.

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