Join us Dec. 1-3 in Nashville for the Digiday Programmatic Marketing Summit
What’s the point of hiring a pricey social media agency when a chicken will do it for free?
Chicken Treat, an Australian food chain, handed over control of its Twitter account to a fowl-mouth named Betty. Besides being a viral marketing stunt, the purpose is for Betty to obtain a Guinness World Record for the first chicken ever to tweet a five letter word before Oct. 30.
Turns out, Betty is a dirty (and stupid!) bird with mostly all of her tweets consisting of nonsensical characters stringed together.
The closest she came to tweeting a five-letter word was yesterday when she typed in the word “bum,” prompting the chain to tweet out a stern warning:
“Bum”? Keep things clean, Betty. pic.twitter.com/qwLAwmQwKr
— Chicken Treat (@ChickenTreat) October 15, 2015
Judging by the hashtag #chickentweet attached to every message, there is some human assistance involved. The multimedia campaign involves cheeky YouTube videos and daily Periscope tours of her coop.
It was created by Perth-based agency Marketforce as a way increase followers on social media, and it’s obviously working — generating worldwide headlines and increasing its Twitter following from 700 to 4,500. Betty’s fans have actually been following each of her tweets closely with many of them cheering on her spelling efforts.
Chicken Treat’s stunt is the first time an animal has been controlling a brand’s Twitter account, but Betty isn’t the first chicken. Last year, Burger King brought back the Subservient Chicken, a person dressed in a chicken costume that listens to people’s commands on social media.
Obviously, there’s some cruel irony in having a chicken promote a company that kills them for human consumption so hopefully Betty gets a reprieve for all of this free labor.
More in Marketing
Future of Marketing Briefing: Creators had a big year. Christmas still went to the celebrities
Despite leaning on creators for most of the year, marketers aren’t doing it for the holiday crunch. That job still belongs to celebrities.
In graphic detail: Six thousand brands later, ChatGPT ads still have a conversion problem
OpenAI has ambitious ad revenue targets, which depend on advertiser demand, measurement and monetisation.
Agencies find AI overuse is leading to brief bloat
Agencies and marketers now frequently use AI tools to create media and creative briefs. But the practice could be a canary in the coalmine for AI overuse in advertising.