Tootsie Roll’s Missed Twitter Opportunity

By Saya Weissman • July 30, 2013 •

A man by the name of Mark Holland has taken it upon himself to answer the age-old question: How many licks does it take to get to the center of a Tootsie Pop? He announced (and completed) his mission on Twitter this week.

Because science. pic.twitter.com/Ih4i6abkLN

— Mark Holland (@RiffRaff41) July 27, 2013

The answer, he found out after painstaking research, is 850 licks. Holland tweeted evidence of his findings on July 27 to his 32,55 followers. Surprisingly, of the 128 retweets and 40 favorites his tweet got, not a single one was from either the Tootsie Roll Twitter account, the brand behind the Tootsie Pop, or the Tootsie Pop feed itself.

Weirdly, Tootsie Pop did retweet the Adweek article about the Tweet. But this seems like an obvious opportunity for them to come up with a fun, human response to Holland, who went to great lengths (and licks) on behalf of the brand. Not even a retweet, guys?

In our brave new post-Oreo Superbowl Blackout Tweet era, real-time marketing is the buzzword of the moment. Tootsie Roll missed a great opportunity to create entertaining, responsive content that could have itself gone viral. At the very least they could have engaged in a funny Twitter conversation with a fan, as Canadian brand Purolator did earlier this month, or tweeted directly to Holland.

It’s still not too late, Tootsie Roll.