Twitter is being used in wildly different ways by brands and consumers, utilizing its incredibly open platform to communicate in every imaginable way. Ashton Kutcher, Steve Nash and Oprah Winfrey keep avid fans abreast of their every movement. Comcast uses the site as a customer service outlet: cable subscribers tweet problems that are quickly answered. Online shoe retailer Zappos uses it as an internal communications tool. Sony created a Twitter advergame to promote the film Terminator: Salvation, while Interscope dropped mysterious hints about Eminem’s latest album Relapse. Dell sells discounted computers through its feed. Starbucks encourages its followers to upload photos of its posters to its stream. Pyramid scheme scammers are using it to hawk their dodgy wares and the US Center for Disease Control even tweeted updates on the swine flu epidemic.

For brands, the attractions are legion. Twitter is an opportunity for any brand to speak instantly to a mass market of consumers. It offers a brand the opportunity to gauge real time, any time, what people are thinking and writing about. It lets brands speak to consumers in an environment that they trust. It’s an open platform and, above all, it’s free.
Author and brand consultant Alan Wolk sees Twitter as fulfilling a fundamental human need facilitated online by the rise in social media: “The main need that so many people have is to be heard and that’s something that Twitter can really help brands with.”

Social media is becoming far more important too for brands. Consumers are making a paradigm shift from trusting advertising to trusting their peers to inform their buying behavior: “Because of the whole crowdsourcing and group think thing, we’re beginning to fact check everything. Unless you’re buying M&Ms, you’re on Google asking, ‘I saw the ad, it looks kinda cool, but is it really?’ That’s going to change how brands interact [with consumers],” says Wolk.

But are the ostensible promises of Twitter false? Wolk identifies two main uses for it, both of which center on utility: “I think people are looking for brands to provide customer service or some sort of information, a coupon, something useful. Not every brand should be on Twitter, because there’s not a whole lot that certain brands have to say.”

It’s a view reinforced by Johnny Vulkan, partner at New York-based agency Anomaly. “Brands get used on Twitter, but they’re not necessarily using Twitter. Just before this I was thinking about where Twitter is being used in an interesting way commercially. I have a sports feed in my Twitter for Everton football club. As a brand, it’s another outlet for them to send out pieces of news. I’m not interested in following Toilet Duck and Tide. Tide might be providing tip-of-the-day stain removal, and that might not be an annoying and interruptive thing, but the question is would I have ever chosen to follow Tide in the first place?”

Crispin Porter + Bogusky uses Twitter to disseminate coupons for Old Navy to bargain hunters and bloggers, says CCO Alex Bogusky, for which he says it is ideally suited. Bogusky caused a stir when he signed off Twitter in March because it took up too much time, only to come back months later. Apart from the sheer volume of communication that his Twitter feed opened up, his personal concern is control: there are four other Bogusky identities online. Additionally, his words are often altered, Broken Telephone-style: “One of the reasons I stopped is because I saw people saying sort of what I’d said, but not really what I said.”

Although Bogusky seems humored by the doppelgangers, brands have been notoriously hard line about product appropriation by the web community, such as Coca-Cola’s draconian response to the Diet Coke and Mentos fountains. Adam Romero, ACD at Agency.com in New York, is adamant that Google and social media increasingly define brands and that they must be prepared to relinquish control to thrive in that space.

Earlier this year, Agency.com and Skittles engineered a Twitter takeover. A feed gathered Skittles comments on Twitter and Facebook, as well as YouTube clips, which were aggregated on their homepage. “Trying to control your brand’s perception is old school. You no longer define your own brand, Google does,” says Romero.

He argues that brands need to use Twitter as a platform and tool to help foster conversation instead. “What it creates is consumer-to-consumer conversation on behalf of a brand. That’s the Holy Grail: when you can get a consumer to talk to another consumer on behalf of the brand.”

Theirs is part cautionary tale, however. The Skittles takeover was yanked after abusive comments started appearing from Twitter users who caught onto the brand’s use of it. “People in social media are very savvy and they know their voice can be heard,” says Romero.

Case in point: Motrin. It’s so-called “Motrin Moms” spot, which questioned the practice of carrying a child in a baby carrier, raised the ire of some parents. Within hours of the spot going up it hit Twitter and Motrin ultimately pulled it.
Romero is also quick to dispel the myth that tweeting is free. Social media is a conversation, not a one-off statement, and that means allocating resources, either as a client or agency, to keep that dialogue going. Stop and you risk disappearing. “The misconception is that it’s much cheaper. We can’t just have an intern on Twitter, we have to have someone who’s educated about the brand.”

But if brands shouldn’t necessarily be vocal on Twitter, they can turn it into a powerful tool by listening. Twitter’s extraordinary selling point is a real-time zeitgeist ticker tape: what’s popular now, what consumers love, hate and complain about.