Was the Charlie Sheen Tweet a Win for Internships.com?

The Behind the Social Media Campaign Series is supported by Oneupweb, an award-winning agency specializing in search marketing, social media and design for mid-to-enterprise level brands. Download Oneupweb’s free whitepaper, “The Bloody Truth about Social Media.”

When it comes to brand building, there are basically two schools of thought: “Build it and they will come” and “brainwash the masses.”

The latter is based on the belief that any publicity is good publicity. If you get your name out there, the rest will fall in to place. A good example of this philosophy is GoldenPalace.com, which recently bought Justin Bieber’s hair, and in the past has purchased William Shatner’s kidney stone for the free publicity.

At the moment, Internships.com fits the latter category as well. If you’ve heard of the brand, it’s most likely due to a single effective marketing campaign: An endorsement by Charlie Sheen via Twitter.

Internships.com, Charlie Sheen & Ad.ly

When Sheen joined Twitter on March 1, it’s safe to say he wasn’t a great fit with a lot of brands. Sheen had just had a major falling out with Chuck Lorre, the producer of Sheen’s hit show Two and a Half Men and gave a series of bizarre interviews. It was clear that the star was something of a train wreck, and, to many, a fascinating one at that. Sheen became a trending topic on Twitter and, when he joined, set the Guinness World Record by getting 1 million followers in about 25 hours.

That combination of public pariah and social media star had appeal for a brand that was chiefly concerned with creating awareness. But Internships.com and Sheen needed a matchmaker.

That’s where Ad.ly came in. Founded in 2009 by Sean Rad, Ad.ly sought to link celebrities with social media endorsements. The firm first came on a lot of people’s radars when it arranged for client Kim Kardashian to receive $10,000 per tweet for spreading the message about Carl’s Jr., a fast food chain. By now, Ad.ly claims more than 1,000 celebrities, who make endorsements on behalf of some 150 brands.

About the Internship

As it so happens, Internships.com’s CEO, Robin Richards, sits on Ad.ly’s board. Nevertheless, the year-old company — which connects internship seekers with companies offering internships — had some stipulations for working with Ad.ly and Sheen. “There were two things we needed to make sure of,” says Kat Garcia, a rep for Internships.com. “We needed to make sure this was a legitimate internship and it was a paid internship.”

The eight-week internship is real, but it’s a little odd — the winner gets to manage Charlie Sheen’s social media operations. It also pays — $10 an hour.

With those specifications in place, Sheen gave his tweet/plug on March 7: “I’m looking to hire a #winning INTERN with #TigerBlood. Apply here – http://bit.ly/hykQQF #TigerBloodIntern #internship #ad.”

A Win For Internships.com?

The response to Sheen’s tweet was immediate. Within the first hour, the tweet got 95,333 clicks. A week later, the offer got more than 82,000 replies. “It’s been overwhelming in a positive way,” Garcia says.

While the promotion was undeniably successful in getting responses to the internship, it’s not clear that Internships.com can build a brand off of it. The company, which had previously only run paid search advertising and the occasional print ad, is now known to most people as an extension of the Charlie Sheen brand.

Rob Frankel, a Los Angeles-based branding expert, says that’s not necessarily a bad thing, but that this appears to be nothing more or less than a publicity stunt. “Awareness for awareness’s sake never works,” he says. “Cancer has a high awareness, but how many people want it?” Frankel says he believes that an attention-getting strategy is fine as long as it ties in with what the brand is offering — for him, the fact that the promotion is around a Charlie Sheen internship doesn’t cut it.

When asked if there are potential downfalls to being yoked to Sheen — what if he dies for instance? — Lindsay Plotkin, another rep for Internships.com, sidestepped the question, focusing instead on what the promotion has meant for Internships’s brand. “It kind of propelled us from maybe not being as well known to being a contender in this space,” she says.

Potential concerns aside, Internships.com still has control of some of the message. One of the cleverer aspects of the campaign is that a single tweet launched a story arc for Internships.com. After narrowing down the field, the winner of the contest should be announced in a few weeks, no doubt providing more free publicity. After that, it will be up to Internships.com to plan what it will do with its newfound awareness. When asked, however, if anyone has successfully built a brand with publicity stunts, Frankel thought for a second. “I can’t think of anyone that has,” he said. “That should tell you something.”

Series Supported by Oneupweb
 
The Behind the Social Media Campaign Series is supported by Oneupweb, an award-winning agency specializing in search marketing, social media and design for mid-to-enterprise level brands. Download Oneupweb’s free whitepaper, “The Bloody Truth about Social Media” to learn how to cut through the clutter and be sure to catch up with them on Facebook and Twitter.