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The New Wheat Thins Commercial Just Isn't True

steve.spillman — Wed, 28 Jul 2010 13:48:22 +0000

Let’s discuss this new Wheat Thins commercial that started airing on TV yesterday. It’s the one where the girl who wrote about the crackers on Twitter gets a pile of them delivered to her doorstep by the company.

The New York Times’ Media Decoder blog wrote about it, saying the goal of the ads is to drive traffic and commentary about Wheat Thins on Twitter. It drew more than 500,000 views on YouTube over the last month, and this week it started airing during Jay Leno, The View, and Sportscenter.

It’s fun! And a good use of social media by Nabisco. It’s just a shame that it’s a fake.

The commercial opens on an A-Team group of Wheat Thins soldiers roaming suburban California in a van. They just happen to be checking Twitter on their computer, in their van. Whatever. But something in that part caught my eye. Exhibit A in why this commercial is a fraud:

That’s not what a Twitter profile looks like! The entire right-hand sidebar is missing. Perhaps they just cleaned it up for clarity in post-production.

The date of the tweet in the commercial is June 11. But as many others noticed, that doesn’t match the June 14 date of the actual tweet on @fox_girl313’s actual Twitter profile. Exhibit B:

The real tweet on that account is also the very first tweet listed on it—there are no previous tweets about a “70’s fashion show” as seen in the commercial. Tabitha did have a Twitter account for about a year prior to the commercial, it turns out, but she never wrote anything on it.

Since the commercial was first uploaded to YouTube, Tabitha has encouraged lots of her Twitter followers to find her on Facebook. That’s where the real story of this commercial is.

Before it was on fake Twitter and before it was on real Twitter, Tabitha actually posted her Wheat Thins cry as a status update to Facebook. She confirms this in a few comments on her Facebook profile, after being called out by one Alex Nichols.

Not exactly what the Wheat Thins YouTube description promised: “Tabatha [sic] Tweeted about Wheat Thins, so we decided to return the favor.” Nor does it jibe with the Times’ quote from the creative director of the ad agency that directed the commercial: “These were actual tweets that we selected.”

I asked Escape Pod, the ad agency that came up with the commercial, for comment and it directed me to a quiet blog post it wrote 'fessing up to the Facebook/Twitter confusion. Basically, a researcher didn’t know that the ad agency didn’t want Facebook updates, and the director of the ad didn’t realize until after all the footage had been shot. It’s an admirable display of honesty and transparency from the ad agency; they seem to understand that the internet doesn’t let mistakes go unturned. “I just knew someone like me would stumble upon this and blog about it. Just as I would.” Smart move and all, but it doesn’t excuse that the commercial represents a bunch of fake things as totally authentic experiences.

With tools like YourOpenBook, which allows users to search the entirety of Facebook for public status updates that include any given phrase, and the obvious Twitter Search, it’s easy to find mentions of whatever you’re looking for on microblogging services. Obviously, the makers of this ad found Tabitha on Facebook and reached out to her aunt for her address and more information, so the family was in on it.

Next, they surprised Tabitha by showing up at her door, which as far as I can gather, is the only real part of the whole thing. Apparently, only her family knew about it prior to the shoot, and the ad agency seems really into the idea of “undeniably real reactions.” Their creative director even mentioned in that blog post that Tabitha really did say she “tweeted” her Facebook status, in the reaction segment of the commercial.

But that pallet with boxes-upon-boxes of Wheat Thins? Exhibit C. It wasn’t real, either. Tabitha posted a lot of pictures from the shoot and commented on them:

Also, she’s getting paid for the appearance—justly, I’m sure, given the hecklers she’s been dealing with on Twitter and Facebook. Also, the Thins have been showing up in smaller shipments on her doorstep, instead of in the huge shipment we saw on the commercial.

Even so, the possibility that the commercial is real hasn’t gone unexplored by the internet public.

Facebook tells the same story.

So people—consumers and advertisers alike—really love the concept of social-media marketing, right? These people literally imitate and repropagate the ad and its message, brand name intact. Just by using something as recognizable as Twitter and something as simple as a bunch of crackers, this agency created an ad that drives organic word-of-mouth. (Whether it drives sales is another matter entirely.)

The problem, though, is that this Twitter-infused ad is undone by the very same forces it seeks to exploit. Twitter giveth and Twitter taketh. The brand tried to be relevant and track people down on Twitter to capture the imagination of the public—but they had to fake the whole thing to do it “right.” Wheat Thins can’t play the Twitter card unless it actually has the Twitter card. The Internet keeps a record of what really happened.

Social-media marketing is supposed to be about authentic brand engagement. Unfortunately, Wheat Thins hasn’t offered anything authentic enough to hold on to.

Unless, of course, Wheat Thins is looking to send a blogger some delicious crackers. In that case this whole thing was totally great. I’ll even tweet how much I liked the ad. Or update my Facebook status. Whichever Wheat Thins prefers.

Steve Spillman

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Wed, 28 Jul 2010 13:48:22 +0000

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