By BRYANT VENOSDEL
Student Writer
Anything that you get free is always better. Food, drinks and T-shirts are all better when you do not have to pay for them.
In this day and age where we are all connected, it is easier now more than ever to be able to reach out to a company or brand and actually talk with them and have a conversation with someone from a certain company. And also get a lifetime of free stuff from these companies. On Twitter, people are able to let a company know how they feel about their products, what suggestions they might have on how to improve it and the companies actually take the customer feedback and will respond to them and let them know that they are hearing out what people have to tell them.
But now, Twitter users aren’t as much talking with these companies on how to improve certain things, they’re asking them for an outrageous amount of free stuff (mainly food from food brands or restaurants) in exchange for a certain amount of retweets. What’s really going on is that brand is getting free promotion. Some person might slide into a brands DM’s and ask for a lifetime supply of Twinkies, but the brands response is that tweet must get into the thousands of retweets or possibly millions and if that happens that brand is getting seen by a lot of people.
A Twitter that has been very popular with a lot of people following them is Burger King. Burger King’s Twitter is full of jokes and puns and they have perfected the art of being able to keep their followers loyal where they retweet their tweets, causing them to be seen everywhere.
A Burger King spokesperson for their Twitter, Jessica Tyrell, knows that Twitter is a platform for bringing people together, even if their a company account and ones an average user. “Twitter can do great things, people from around the world can be in contact with one another and it is all at their fingertips,” said Jessica. “We love our Twitter followers and try to respond to them as soon as possible, they’re our loyal customers and when they retweet what we post to their followers, it’s always appreciated,” said Tyrell.Chris Punto is an avid Twitter user, who retweets every Funko (@OriginalFunko) tweet in a chance to win one of their collectible figurines. He has yet to win one, as these Funko tweets get retweeted by thousands of people, but this is another way that the brand and the user are connecting and making customer involvement by offering them a chance at something for free.
Punto is also a person who has a deal going on with a company in exchange for retweets. O’Fallon Brewery has offered Punto a lifetime supply of beer if he can get 100,000 retweets. “I really like there beer and I just DM’d them asking how many retweets for a lifetime supply and they actually responded and told me 100,000,” said Punto. “I really don’t have much hope for it now, as it’s basically stopped getting retweeted at about 300, but who knows,” said Punto.Some companies are actually kind enough and realize that there is no way an average Twitter user is going to get the amount of retweets that they say.
Last year, Carter Wilkerson tweeted at Wendy’s, asking how many retweets he would need for a year of free chicken nuggets. Wendy’s responded by saying he would need 18 million. Wilkerson said consider it done and his tweet immediately took off and started getting retweeted everywhere. It finally reached a record 3.6 million retweets and Wendy’s agreed that that was enough for him to get the free chicken nuggets.
A spokesperson for Wendy’s Twitter, Brook Gale, is glad that the Wendy’s company was able to give Wilkerson his free chicken nuggets and also glad that the company was able to be part of that viral moment. “It was a pretty big thing, I don’t think anyone thought that it would get so blown up, but it did,” said Gale. “Even though that was a while ago, we still get people asking for free chicken nuggets and burgers every day and if they got the millions of retweets like he did, they probably deserve it,” said Gale.Twitter isn’t the first place where companies have done free giveaways for people. Companies giving out free products or food during online giveaways or promotions isn’t anything new at all, for some stores, having a big online presence is very important to them.
They are constantly updating their Facebook or website and trying to get people to come across their page, but it might not work for every place. Pranaya Shresta is a manager at Walmart in Alva and has the duty of running their Facebook page from time-to-time. With a store like Walmart and the location that it’s in, they don’t necessarily need to worry about having to do giveaways for advertisement. “I usually take pictures of the deals or stuff on clearance that we have and upload them on Facebook,” said Shresta. “But the deals that I post on there is going to hopefully be seen by someone and that will bring them to the store when they might not have.” Every stores motto is different and their focuses might be on different things, but any company who has a presence online or social media are being able to advertise for free.
You can go on Twitter and tweet to your favorite company and there is a chance that they will respond to you within an hour. The group of people who are all hired to run these companies are more than likely fresh out of college and relate to this generation more than the older generation would have and how that older generation’s companies advertised and interacted with the consumer.
You can even see companies on Twitter actually having friendly arguments about who is better. Burger King saying how their 5 for $4 deal is the better than Wendy’s 4 for $4 deal and then Wendy’s firing back at how their “fresh, never frozen” food is better than what Burger King serves.
Either way, both companies have millions of followers on Twitter and don’t even need to pay for time on TV to run their ads, when all they have to do is send a tweet, and the whole world can see it.