SAN FRANCISCO – It’s the kind of story about which the general public doesn’t particularly give a fuck, but over which marketing and public relations people routinely pitch themselves out of third-story windows: A big company has its panties in a bunch over its ads being displayed on Twitter in proximity to pictures of dicks, or some such silly shit.
“As Twitter works to resolve this issue, we have temporarily suspended our campaign,” said some guy from a company called ‘Nielsen’ — which, I learned just now, is not a musical duo featuring two suspected albino children of the guy who sang the 1958 hit song “Poor Little Fool.”
Apparently, the suits at Nielsen don’t want anyone contemplating the rhetorical (and in context, ironic) question “Am I getting the most value from my media buy?” while also looking at “Daily Dick Pictures” or “Homemade Porn.”
Joining Nielsen in freaking the fuck out over this stupid bullshit is a company that sells creepy, translucent swill filled with electroglides or selectolights or whatever it’s called, another company that employs a news anchor who first claimed his helicopter got shot down in Iraq but later said he’d just gotten confused about the time he stubbed his toe getting out of a limo at the Emmy Awards, and a big-time drug dealer named “Duane Reade.”
“We’re aware that Promoted Tweets are being displayed on some profiles that contain inappropriate content,” said some anonymous dickhead from Twitter who has been warned not to utter the word “porn” in reference to this situation unless he wants to be looking for a new job this time tomorrow. “We are committed to providing a safe environment for brands to build their business, and our product team is working to fix the issue.”
Displaying a firm grasp on the painfully obvious, a bunch of obnoxious, self-declared “media experts” are now running around pointing out how “challenging” it can be for brands to “manage their message” or “control the context” when advertising on social media and user-generated content sites. Advertisers simply can’t be certain their ads will be displayed next to something useful, informative and family-friendly, like @fuzzybuds69 tweeting “dewd, im sooooo baked write now lolz,” or Woody Harrelson helpfully opining that “9/11 WAS AN INSIDE JOB!!! WAAAAKE UUUPPPP AMERICA!!!!”
“Twitter does have a lot of these types of accounts, and people are interested in that type of content,” said Stuart McLennan, who has some bullshit title like Director of Purchased Social Media Strategic Synergies at a company with a really irritating name (iProspect). Apparently, he’s another guy who can’t say “porn” to reporters without losing his reserved corporate parking space.
“Whether that would stop me recommending Twitter to a client? I’m not sure,” McLennan added, showing the sort of decisiveness and tactical clarity that leads business owners to scream “Could somebody please remind me what I’m paying this asshole for?” about consultants after hanging up the phone following conference calls. “Twitter is a very distinctive place; the conversations you can have, and the real-time nature of the platform, if clients require it.”
So, there you have it: A handful of big brands are all hot and bothered over a problem even some white-collar dweeb whose fucking job it is to worry about “that type of content” can’t bring himself to fret over, because Twitter is “distinctive” — by which, I assume, he means Twitter permits people to humiliate themselves and behave like utter morons 140 characters at a time, which clearly distinguishes it from something like Facebook, where you commit substantially more verbiage at a time to the task of making your mother wish she had taken the pill back in the day.
In related news, some guy wearing a Nike T-shirt just openly took a piss on the R-Train right after the Woodhaven and Queens Blvd. stop. An ad purchasing expert who was asked about the incident said he thinks it could lead consumers en masse to boycott Lebron James, egg Spike Lee’s car and/or descend upon Nike’s headquarters in Beaverton to set Phil Knight’s mustache on fire. Or maybe they won’t, because you know, that Nike “swoosh” thing is pretty distinctive, too.
We’ll have more on Urinegate out of New York (and whatever this stupid Twitter, porn, Gatorade and Gunnar Nelson thing is all about) as new details emerge.
