Politics

Death by Tweet?

By Anne Landman

The offending image Supercool Creative, a social marketing company that tries to shape opinion by making viral videos and posting them on the Web, recently adopted a new Superman-like hero as its logo. So what's the problem? The guy is shown smoking a cigarette. After the image prompted a man from Prospect, Connecticut to tweet the company letting them know their smoking logo was not cool, Supercool Creative decided to take turn what appeared to be a nascent social effort to oust their logo into a into a viral challenge. Supercool promised to re-do their Web page, letterhead, business cards, social networking sites and everything else with a non-smoking Superman logo if anti-smoking advocates could get 500 people to tweet the agency expressing their opinion that the smoking image is no good. The LGBT Network for Tobacco Control, which is working to round up tweets, explains, "This isn?t about a cigarette, it?s about professional arbiters of cool feeling free to invoke smoking or getting public backlash for doing so. And it?s about leveraging social media, and how many people care. They challenged us to get 500 people who cared about not linking tobacco and cool, and I say, no problem, watch us!" Supercool suggested people send tweets to @supercoolagency saying "Change our Logo #losethecig." The Agency is posting all the tweets on a Web page here.

Full post as published by PR Watch on May 17, 2010 (boomark / email).