Twitter’s Badvertising: The ad that cost $0 is so bad it’s good

 

Twitter have uploaded the ‘best/worst recruiting web advert of all time’ to Youtube, and it’s going viral.

At the end of January 2012 it was HackWeek. For five working days Twitter allowed its staff to desert their dayjobs in order to form collaborative groups. These mini-teams came together to create ‘new tools, ideas and designs to make the Twitter experience even better’.

Two members of the video production team at Twitter, Jeremy Briggs and Ian Padgham, decided to focus their efforts on producing a recruitment web-video that cost absolutely nothing to make (Jeremy can be seen below, ‘dancing’).

Speaking exclusively to Hub, Jeremy Briggs told us that “the recruiting team [at Twitter] had previously talked to me about doing an updated video. Ian and I came up with the overall idea the week before HackWeek, while filming a Twitter Story in Baltimore.’

Instead of creating a sleek corporate video, Jeremy and Ian let loose with MovieMaker (or similar) and Jeremy’s dated handheld camera.

That’s not to say that we advocate Jeremy and Ian’s ‘rustic’ filming techniques. At Hub we take a massive amount of pride in delivering content of the highest quality. We work hard to stay one step ahead of the technological-game. Come and chat to us about advertising & production techniques on Twitter, nothing would make us happier (geek alert).

But, we’re willing to let the Twitter boys off, as their video is so bad it’s good.

The cheesy backing music, wordart-style text and Twitter-logo-shaped screenwipe are touches of budget video-production genius. The advert knows that it is being made on a shoestring, and it knows people are going to laugh at it. That’s why it works.

It demonstrates something that we believe in at Hub: that the ethos and story of a brand are the key facets of a successful web-video.

The Twitter video is funny, cheeky, cool and modern. It communicates what it needs to. It’s innovative and way ahead of the curve. In other words, the video embodies all of the values that Twitter hold dear.

That’s probably why Jeremy and Ian could make it so quickly, “We wrote it on Monday, filmed Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday and finished editing Friday morning.”

Although the video production technology used to create Twitter’s HackWeek video is a far cry from our corporate videos, advertisements and animation at Hub, their focus on core brand-values is something that we admire.

P.S. What’s your favourite moment? Mine is probably the ‘walk with me’ arm-gesture on 53 seconds. Fine acting, Jeremy!