Social Media Marketing

Brands typically steer clear of the hard news trending on Twitter, preferring to use the platform to celebrate things like National Dog Day... or snarkily shut down peace offerings from competitors.

This has been a busy week for news, resulting in hundreds of thousands of Tweets around Monday's stock market crash and the Virginia gunman shooting a reporter and photographer on-air. Neither of those are exactly conversation candy for brands, who generally prefer to go the light and irreverant route on social media.

Nothing sums up "light and irreverant" more than that pillar of the Internet, cute animals. Wednesday was National Dog Day, which generated more than half a million Tweets. Every brand in the world seemed to get on board, including obvious ones like PETA and Petco - the latter intelligently included a relevant call-to-action in its Tweet. Amazon did the same.

Some of the other brands tailoring their messages to National Dog Day included Disney, Samsung, and NASA.

Many #NationalDogDay Tweets came from sports franchises, either showcasing athletes with their dogs (Read more...) featuring dogs wearing their jerseys. My personal favorite came from the Green Bay Packers - a bulldog wearing a cheesehead hat.

Burger King didn't celebrate National Dog Day, instead tweeting an olive branch to McDonald's. In the spirit of World Peace Day, which all United Nations member states observe on September 21, Burger King reached out to its rival to suggest the two companies join forces and create a McWhopper.

Burger King's Tweet linked to a website detailing the proposal, which would entail the two brands combining their signature items that day at a pop-up restaurant. McDonald's tweeted back a link to a letter chief executive Steve Easterbrook wrote on Facebook to the effect of, "We're good, thanks."

Burger King's proposed pop-up restaurant would be in Atlanta - a halfway point between Chicago and Miami, where the respective burger brands are headquartered. This prompted Krystal, an Atlanta-based fast food chain that spans the South, to join the conversation.

Burger King has yet to reply to Krystal.

This last Tweet really has nothing to do with anything, but I thought it was funny. This is my edition of Tweets of the Week and I can highlight those brilliant weirdos at Denny's if I want to.

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