Last Month Twitter and Amex announced Amex Sync With Twitter, which lets you connect your Amex Card with your twitter account, and buy thinks by tweeting special hashtags. Twitters hope with this is to bring an additional revenue stream to their business. I think it could become so much more. You can already grab great deals by tweeting at special hashtags by following this @americanexpress .
The holy grail in product placement ads is the ability to watch a show where Tiger Woods uses a specific golf ball, press a button on your remote, and the next day next a box of a dozen of those same golf balls in the mail. Infomercials and Shows like HSN and QVC clearly demonstrate that television is a great media for selling products direct to consumers. Right now the only ways to buy are to call or go to their website. Both of those processes are disruptive to your existing behavior, so it would take a really great commercial or amazing deal to get you to take action and act.
However, imagine a world where you could buy those products without disrupting what you are doing. I think Amex Sync With Twitter might be the toolbox needed to bring the holy grail to fruition.
Harvey levin spoke at SXSW about the converging screen experience and the opportunities that a Multi-Screen world creates. The facts on the ground are clear. People use their Smartphones, tablets, and laptops while watching Television. They tweet while watching, they use GetGlue while watching, They check IMDB while watching, they update their facebook status while watching television.
The Only Thing Holding Them Back From Shopping While Watching TV is A Way To Do It Simultaneously.
If I see a great product on QVC, I doubt I would go through the checkout process, but if it was as simple as tweet, that would be awesome. I would totally buy a product with a tweet.
That is only a small step away from product placement in television becoming direct response. How difficult would it be for every time a product is used in a tv show, for them to show a hashtag on the bottom of the screen letting people order with Amex Sync with Twitter. Just scroll across the bottom of the screen every time Randy Jackson takes a swig of Coke Zero #BOGOCokeZero to get 2 cases of Coke Zero delivered to your door for $3.95.
The only challenges I see are the world of American Express users, and Tweeters, who are signed up and comfortable using Sync with Twitter, and interested in a product used in a show, would probably be very slim. Still the costs of setting up such an operation would almost nothing…
There are many great ideas that the marketing world has known we are moving towards, but dont quite know how it will manifest itself. Partially because it requires disrupting our behavior and mostly because the technology that makes this so simple may not be invented yet. In this case, the technology is ready, the user is ready… The only question is… Is Holywood ready?!
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