After following a recent interaction between AMC Theatres and Oreo on Twitter, a thought hit me: brands should make friends with brands on social media. It started out innocently with Oreo asking fans, "Ever bring your own Oreo cookies to the movie theater? #slicksnacker". The AMC Twitter team saw the opportunity to playfully respond with, "NOT COOL, COOKIE." Easy enough right? That tweet landed them more than 1.8K retweets. Pretty impressive. That in itself, would have been enough for me. Cute, simple, effective.
Oreo thought otherwise, "Fair enough, @AMCTheatres, but don't hate the player, hate the game (along with a hilarious picture of Oreo eyes watching them)".
We see this type of interaction occasionally, and all get giggles out of it, but should there be more there? Just as we have friends who we interact with on a regular basis, should brands?
When community managers talk about a brand's presence on social media, we talk about its creative presentation, interaction with customers, influencers and sister brands, but rarely about how it interacts with other brands. We all pride ourselves on creating personalities for brand accounts, but rarely do we have an opportunity to showcase them in situations like these.
Now, it can be tough for brands to take the leap and tweet anything (let alone smack talk like AMC Theatres here), but it about analyzing the brand. Have they been reactive before? Do they keep things light? Have they bantered with fans?
If all works out well, you could get a great interaction like Oreo and AMC, or Taco Bell and Old Spice (which I think could have been an entire campaign in itself) - which gives you great impression numbers. If not, you put it out there, they don't reply, and hey no harm, no foul. Brand "friendships" could be the next frontier in the social sphere, if you are willing to take that first step. As they always say, have to take the risk to reap the rewards.