You only have 140 characters per tweet. What can you possibly do to guarantee your tweet will have that immortal, everlasting quality to it?
Well, if you’re Utrecht-based design studio Autobahn, you could carve your tweets in Belgian hard stone for the Stone Carved Tweets project!
Engraver Richard Wending along with Autobahn set up a Twitter feed #StoneCarvedTweets (no longer live unfortunately) for one day as part of Amsterdam’s ABC Urban Arts Festival on June 26th. Users were invited to submit messages that would then be physically printed out from a computer, deposited in a real-world inbox & carved in stone by Richard Wending.
Stone carving aint no picnic however & true craftsmanship takes time. The day of the festival proved long enough for only 1 tweet to be carved & at an average estimated carving cost of €1500-2000 per tweet, you’d want to pick your 140 characters carefully…
Surely this approach must give weight to the thought that Twitter, as a medium, is here to stay?
Yesterday, one of the most talked-about campaigns in recent history, Old Spice’s ‘The Man Your Man Could Smell Like’ (or TMYMCSL , as we have seen it ‘abbreviated’ to) took on a new dimension – simultaneously delighting millions of fans and setting a new bar for social media engagement by brands.
Having already racked up millions of views on YouTube for their TV ads and been awarded the Cannes Lions Grand Prix a few weeks ago, the campaign was already a viral hit. Then yesterday, the agency behind the campaign, Wieden & Kennedy led by Ian Tait (recently of Poke, London), took it to another level by using Twitter and YouTube to create and broadcast over 100 videos in real-time, with ‘TMYMCSL’ (actor and former sports star Isaiah Mustafa) fronting videos responding to tweets to the @oldspice Twitter account. Initially using sponsored tweets and sponsored Twitter trends, within hours the word had spread and everyone from Ellen DeGeneres to Perez Hilton to regular fans were getting in on the act.
We realised today that it’s 2 years ago this summer that Rothco moved from our old home in Rathmines to our new building on Pembroke Row. So indulge us in this bit of nostalgia as we re-watch our ‘Rothco is Moving’ video. It’s been a busy 2 years!
We’re really excited about the new campaign for 98FM which launches today. We’ve been working with the team at 98FM to re-brand the station, and you’ll see the new logo across everything from the TV ad, to the website, twitter (@98fmdotcom), Facebook and of course the snazzy new Fiats driven by the Thunder Team.
The TV ad features a talking seal (sure why not?) who like 98FM, makes Now good for everyone he meets. You can check it out here.
If it’s been a while since you tuned in, then like our seal, we’d suggest you ‘Do it now’.
Have a great bank holiday weekend from all at Rothco.
