As Oprah pulled up at the Twitter table last week it seemed like the party was over. There are no shortage of people who declared that the reason to use Twitter was dead now that it was being taken over by celebrities like Aston Kutcher (@aplusk) and the aforementioned Ms. Winfrey.

I guess that is one way you could view the happenings, yet I’m going to ask you take a look at a different group of people (all of whom are celebrities) and I think you will get the sense that while Oprah is undoubtedly like your parents (and why not follow my Dad – @actonroad) chaperoning and then deciding to dance at your prom, if you take the time to follow some of the great athletes that have embraced Twitter you’ll get a totally different view.

I am going to start by saying that I do not really think it’s fair to put Shaq or Lance Armstrong in the same column as Oprah when it comes to their “cool” factor, but I think it is essentially fair if we are just trying to compare celebr-twit to celebri-twit on my invented “this person is autograph worthy” scale. Continue Reading…

In law there is a philosophy that you are never supposed to ask a question of a witness without knowing exactly what their response will be. I mean you don’t want to give them any room to hurt your case by opening the door to an answer you did not want. So this week when I got sent the following image depicting a BMW response to an Audi advertisement I couldn’t help but think the same philosophy seems like a pretty good attitude to take in marketing as well.

Let’s take a minute to think about the Audi advertisement – they obviously were taking a shot at their rivals at BMW but I am quite certain nobody involved in planning this billboard expected BMW to hit back with such an amazing response. So the question then becomes should they have had the foresight and even if they did not how can Audi now respond when they have so clearly been “pwned” by BMW? Continue Reading…