Coen Brothers film campaign surprises with Tweet newspaper ad

Published January 9, 2014 at 7:50 am

At this point, the sight of tweets is not uncommon and perhaps even expected wherever you look online. However, when we usually see that little blue bird symbol, it’s surrounded by several others.

The Coen Brothers, filmmakers behind the movie “Inside Llewyn Davis” which seems to be gathering much of the pre-Oscar buzz, have tried a new campaign to lure people to their film, one that focuses on less rather than more.

This involved placing an ad in the New York Times that features, dead center, exactly one tweetfrom the Times’ own film critic A.O. Scott surrounded by dead space. At the bottom is the phrase “the best picture of the year,” attributed to Scott.

What seems to have captured the media about this campaign is the way this single message has been used for an entire ad, breaking the news to many that this was even possible. Scott himself has seemed very surprised by this, and did not say that he had explicitly given permission (although he didn’t say he hadn’t either).

One post on ReadWrite even says that this campaign “tests Twitter rules,” since Scott’s original tweet was slightly edited before it was used. More specifically the use might also be a violation of Twitter’s rules of service regarding advertising without the knowledge of the original Tweeter.

Though there don’t appear to have been any major legal repercussions from this as of yet, marketers need to make sure they abide by the terms of use in Twitter and other platforms when crafting talked-about advertising like this.