Category: Social Media

Best Buy: Twelpforce on Twitter

Here is a truly new-age way of addressing customer needs in real time by harnessing Twitter. Instead of pushing promotions, Best Buy puts help in the timeline and lets customers pull value when they actually need it.

A help desk that lives in public

Twelpforce is built on a simple premise. Twelpforce is Best Buy’s Twitter-based customer support program, built to connect customer questions with employees who can answer them. The people who know the answers are already inside the company. Put them on Twitter, let them respond directly, and make the answers visible to everyone else with the same question.

It turns customer service into a living knowledge base. Every reply is both a resolution for one person and reassurance for the next hundred who are watching.

How Twelpforce works

The mechanic is straightforward:

  • Customer asks a question on Twitter.
  • Trained employees respond in real time from within their area of expertise.
  • The conversation stays public, so answers become searchable and shareable.
  • Trust compounds, because the brand is seen helping, not just selling.

In consumer electronics retail, service is often the fastest signal of trust and competence.

The real question is whether public, real-time help can build more trust than another stream of promotional posts.

Why it lands: help is a stronger hook than hype

Most brand communication tries to create desire. Twelpforce starts with a different human truth. When something breaks or confuses you, you want a competent person, quickly. The campaign meets that moment and makes the brand useful on demand. This is a stronger brand move than another promotional burst, because visible help makes expertise tangible at the exact moment of need.

Extractable takeaway: If your category creates frequent questions, treat support as a scalable content engine. Public answers reduce repeat effort, improve perceived expertise, and create credibility that paid media struggles to buy.

That publicness is the multiplier because one useful answer reduces uncertainty for the asker and for everyone else who sees it. A private call solves one case. A public answer signals, repeatedly, that the brand shows up when it matters.

Recognition that follows the idea

The campaign is credited to Crispin Porter + Bogusky for Best Buy. It goes on to win a Gold Clio Award in Interactive, under the “Innovative Use of Technology” category.

What to steal for your own social support play

  • Design for repeat questions: build templates and escalation paths so answers stay fast without becoming robotic.
  • Make expertise discoverable: route topics to specialists, not a generic handle that slows everything down.
  • Write for the invisible audience: every reply should help the original asker and anyone who finds it later.
  • Set clear guardrails: define what can be solved publicly and what must move to private channels.
  • Measure more than volume: track time-to-first-response, resolution rate, sentiment shift, and deflection of repeat issues.

A few fast answers before you act

What is Twelpforce in one sentence?

It is a Twitter-based customer help program where employees answer questions publicly in real time, turning support into a visible brand asset.

Why does public support change the marketing equation?

Because every answered question doubles as proof. People trust what they see a brand do for others, especially when the moment is unscripted and timely.

What makes this “interactive” rather than just social posting?

The customer initiates the experience with a question, and the brand responds in a two-way exchange that creates a usable outcome, not just awareness.

What is the biggest operational risk?

Inconsistency. If response times, tone, or accuracy vary widely, the same public visibility that builds trust can also expose gaps.

How do you know if a program like this is working?

Look for faster response times, high resolution rates, fewer repeated questions, improved sentiment, and a growing perception that the brand is genuinely helpful.

A Non Smoking Generation: Ugly Models

A teenage girl applies to a glamorous new modelling agency called “U-Models”. She fills in her age, height, and other details, uploads a photo, and waits for the call-back.

Then the twist lands. “U-Models” is revealed as “Ugly Models”, and the campaign’s message is blunt: smoking doesn’t just damage you in the long run. It shows up on your face, sooner than you think.

A fake model search that weaponises the application form

The execution is built like a real talent hunt. Recruitment happens online, and the “application” is the product. Applicants are asked for basics like age and an uploaded photo. Smoking status is part of the form, too.

After the sign-ups, the campaign responds at scale. Applicants are told they are “too cute” for this agency because it is looking for “ugly models”. They are then shown a retouched version of their own photo that visualises how they might look after years of smoking.

How it turns a health warning into personal evidence

Most anti-smoking messages rely on abstract futures: disease, risk, statistics. This one drags the consequence into a mirror. It converts “smoking is harmful” into “this is what it can do to you”, using the viewer’s own face as proof, and using the modelling world as the attention hook.

In Scandinavian youth health communication, campaigns often have to compete with fashion and celebrity culture for attention.

The real question is how you make a long-term health risk feel socially immediate to a teenager.

Why it lands with the target group

The psychological move is simple: it swaps distant health outcomes for immediate social stakes. For teenagers, “identity now” usually beats “health later”. The campaign borrows the exact mechanics young audiences already understand. Casting calls, celebrity endorsement, online applications. Then it flips those mechanics into an uncomfortable reveal that is hard to unsee. That works because a personalised image collapses an abstract warning into an immediate identity threat.

Extractable takeaway: If your audience discounts long-term risk, translate the consequence into a near-term identity signal, and make the “proof” feel personally addressed rather than generally broadcast.

The intent, and the ethical edge you can’t ignore

This is a deliberately provocative form of social marketing. It uses deception, and it leans on appearance anxiety to get attention. That friction is part of the spread. People talk about it because it feels shocking, and because it breaks the usual public-service tone.

The pattern is effective, but it should only be used where the public-good case is strong and the safeguards are explicit. If you borrow the pattern, borrow it with care. The line between “wake-up call” and “harmful shaming” is thin, especially when the audience is young. The execution works because it is sharp, but it also raises real questions about consent, data handling, and emotional impact.

What to steal for your next behavior-change idea

  • Use a familiar cultural container. Here it is modelling and celebrity culture. Pick a container your audience already pays attention to.
  • Make the interaction do the persuasion. The form, the upload, and the response are the message. Not the headline.
  • Deliver a personalised “receipt”. The retouched photo turns a general warning into concrete evidence.
  • Design the reveal as the share trigger. The moment of “wait, this isn’t what I thought” is the social fuel.

A few fast answers before you act

What is “Ugly Models” in this context?

It is an anti-smoking campaign framed as a modelling recruitment drive called “U-Models”, later revealed as “Ugly Models”, designed to warn teenagers about the visible impact smoking can have on appearance.

How does the campaign mechanism work?

Teenagers apply online to a supposed model agency and upload a photo. The campaign then responds with a reveal message and a retouched version of the applicant’s own photo that visualises the effects of smoking over time.

Why is the personalised photo so powerful?

Because it turns a general warning into something that feels directly attached to the viewer’s own identity. The consequence stops being abstract and starts feeling immediate, visible, and personal.

Why focus on appearance instead of health consequences?

The idea is that long-term health warnings are often ignored by teenagers, while near-term identity and appearance cues are harder to dismiss. The campaign makes the risk feel immediate and personal.

What’s the main risk in copying this approach?

The tactic uses deception and can slide into shaming. If the audience is young, you need extra care around consent, safeguarding, and avoiding harm while still delivering a clear public-good message.

Domino’s: Pizza Holdouts

When your friends “rat you out” to a pizza brand

Domino’s campaign against consumers who cannot stand its pizza continues. Crispin Porter + Bogusky is back with a new facet of the “New Pizza” campaign. The brand sets out to harass three poor unsuspecting souls who have been ratted out as not eating Domino’s.

The premise is that “only a handful” of people have not tried the new pizza recipe Domino’s came out with.

The mechanic: turn trial into a social bounty hunt

The mechanism is simple and slightly mean in a way that makes people watch. Identify the “holdout”. Make their resistance a story. Then recruit their friends as the distribution layer, so the campaign spreads through personal networks instead of brand channels alone. Because the invitation comes from someone you know, it carries social proof and mild pressure that paid media cannot.

In US quick-service marketing, “get them to try it once” is often the hardest job, because taste perceptions and jokes about quality can become cultural default settings.

Why it lands: public call-out plus a clear path to redemption

This works because the tension is real. People do have strong opinions about Domino’s. Making the holdout visible creates social pressure, but the campaign balances that pressure by offering an easy way out. Try the new recipe. Join the conversation. Stop being the exception.

Extractable takeaway: When you use public call-out, pair it with a low-friction “redemption” action so people can update their stance without losing face.

The real question is whether your trial problem is a product problem or a permission problem, and which one you can solve fastest.

The business intent: accelerate reappraisal of the product

This is not a love-brand play. It is a credibility reset. Domino’s wants lapsed and sceptical customers to re-test the product, so the “new recipe” can replace the old mental model.

After this, Domino’s reported doubling its profits last quarter to $23.6 million.

Forcing first trial at scale: practical moves

  • Make the barrier explicit. “You have not tried it” is a clearer friction point than “please consider our brand”.
  • Recruit friends, not audiences. Social pressure works best when it comes from someone the holdout knows.
  • Give the story a role people can play. “Bounty hunter” is a participation frame, not just a message.
  • Link the stunt to a measurable behaviour. The only KPI that matters here is trial, not views.

So do you know a pizza holdout? Find out how to become a Taste Bud Bounty Hunter at www.PizzaHoldouts.com. A “Taste Bud Bounty Hunter” is the friend who nominates a holdout and nudges them to try the new recipe.

A few fast answers before you act

What is Domino’s “Pizza Holdouts” in one sentence?

A campaign that targets people who still have not tried the “new” Domino’s recipe, using friends to identify them and turning first-trial into a playful hunt.

What is the core mechanism?

Social recruitment plus a role people can play. Friends “rat out” holdouts, and the brand reframes outreach as a bounty-hunt style participation story.

Why does using friends change the effectiveness?

Because social pressure is more persuasive when it comes from someone you know. The message is carried by relationships, not just media.

What is the real KPI this format is trying to move?

Trial. The stunt is designed to force the first bite, not just generate views or talk.

What is the most transferable takeaway?

If your growth problem is “first experience”, make the barrier explicit, recruit peer influence, and design a participation frame that points to the behaviour you want.