Using celebrities to increase brand awareness is nothing new, but social media has made it possible for this to be done at pretty much any given moment, without any budget at all. It’s all about finding a situation and identifying synergy that exists with that person in that situation.
Back in the 1990s, MC Hammer used to charge a fair price to appear in commercials and endorse products — not many companies could afford his asking price. At the recent Loerie Awards in Cape Town, Cape Town got some fantastic international exposure as @MCHammer interacted with @CapeTownTourism on Twitter.
MC Hammer was hosting the Sunday night awards ceremony, much to the surprise of the thousand or so people in the audience. He burst onto the stage performing his 1990 hit single “U Can’t Touch This” and the crowd went wild. Flow Communications was providing coverage of the event through Cape Town Tourism’s Twitter account and welcomed @MCHammer to the city on their behalf. Backstage, he took the time to simply reply “thank u”. With more than 2.8-million Twitter followers, however, this was a very valuable gesture.
Throughout the evening, we mentioned him in various tweets and he would retweet them — he even started retweeting tweets about Cape Town in which he had not been mentioned. @CapeTownTourism gained between 70 and 80 followers within two hours and various MC Hammer fans around the world starting interacting with @CapeTownTourism, some even asking for trip planning information.
After the event we did a short video interview with MC Hammer about why he enjoys Cape Town, and he became an ambassador for the city with his answer.
Read the blog about MC Hammer hosting the Loerie Awards in Cape Town.