A few months back when I was following the Lost Underground Art Project, I joined Twitter as a way to help pass along clues from the LA reveals as they happened to other die-hard Lost fans throughout the country. Prior to that, I thought of Twitter as nothing but a one-sentence vanity project for celebs and other narcissists (just sayin’), but going through the ARG as a collaborative process allowed me to see the value in Twitter as a way to immediately spread information to those with whom I was connected. Now that the ARG is complete, I see the secondary value, which is to hear about things that interest me from people who interest me in real time. Pretty nifty for a 140-character pass time.
So, as for people who interest me, I’m a rather fond of Coco, or Co-nos as I like to call him (aka Conan O’Brien), and my heart skipped a beat when he joined Twitter just a couple of weeks ago with a single tweet: Today I interviewed a squirrel in my backyard and then threw to commercial. Somebody help me. Each day since, he’s added one additional tweet lamenting his jobless status and the fact that he has too much time on his hands. As of today, @conanobrien has gained over 600,000 followers…and on March 5th, he decided to follow one.
. . . . You had to be there . . . . (artwork by @sirmitchell)
That one person – chosen at random – is 19-year-old Sarah Killen (@LovelyButton) from Michigan who, since Conan announced her as his one “follow”, has added over 19,000 fans of her own – not to mention a fountain of publicity and good fortune that comes with getting the Coco seal of approval. As I checked up on Twitter early this morning, a little link about Sarah caught my eye, which brings me to the point of this article.
The link – posted by a friend – was to an LA Times blogpost about Sarah and Conan, and mentioned something very interesting…that it seems there are several Twitter accounts surfacing all relating to Conan. Well, not to Conan exactly, but to Conan’s things. Little did I realize, but when Conan tweeted about a squirrel, suddenly his squirrel had a Twitter account. When Conan tweeted about his ’92 Ford Taurus, the Taurus began sending tweets. Just yesterday, the frozen peas in Conan’s freezer started sending out their own messages, too. As of this morning, it seems there are at least 10 Twitter accounts including his beard, his ATM card and his freckles – all of whom interact with Conan’s tweets and each other’s. Though all of this still seems to be a fairly hush-hush development, these accounts are slowly accumulating their own steady stream of followers (me included).
Now of course we have no way to know if Conan is actually behind all of these accounts, but either way, this is genius viral marketing. If Conan and his team are creating this Twitter scavenger hunt, it’s leading his followers on a breadcrumb-dotted path back to Conan again and again. Each time a new account is found and followed, it accounts for more “real estate” taken in a follower’s stream continually reminding the reader about all things Conan. Conceivably, if Conan tweets once per day, and each tweet leads to a new off-shoot, then in a matter of months there could be dozens of Conan-related Twitter accounts filling up the tweet-space being gladly gobbled up by people (like me) who can’t get enough Coco.
Alternately, let’s say Conan is not behind these additional accounts. Regardless, the power of viral marketing has kicked in and taken over as all Conan has to do is deliver one tweet per day and then sit back while a few creative fans do the rest. Either way, genius I say!
As we move from Conan’s squirrel to his monkey to his sharpie (which connected the dots with his freckles), we’ll have to wait to see where this treasure hunt will finally lead us. I’m hoping that, as we move through the summer, we’ll be introduced to something by the name of Conan’s New Show. That would be the ultimate treasure.
___________
You, too, can follow Coco’s menagerie:
@ConanOBrien, @ConansSquirrel, @ConansFreckles, @ConansSharpie, @ConansTaurus, @ConansMonkey, @CoCosBeard, @CoCosATMcard, @ConansPeas, @LovelyButtons, @KillensSquirrel
NEW! @conanspromtux, @conansraisinets, @conansdoctor, @conanhealthcare, @killenstwizzler
_________
@fancfl (that’s me!)
Read Full Post »
