Kraft To Turn Mac & Cheese Tweets Into TV Ads Within 24 Hours

From Mashable:

Your tweet about Kraft’s Macaroni & Cheese could be on TV tonight if the brand picks it up for a new initiative converting tweets into TV ads.

The marketing minds behind the brand, along with agency Crispin Porter + Bogusky, are trolling Twitter right now looking for just the right tweet. The only qualification is that the message mentions Kraft Mac & Cheese. Kraft and the agency will then pick five tweets, and write and shoot ads based on them this afternoon. All the filming is taking place in a studio with multiple sets in Los Angeles. One of the five will run during Conan and Lopez Tonight this evening on TBS. The other four will run on Kraft Mac & Cheese’s Facebook Page.

Noelle O’Mara, brand manager at Kraft Macaroni & Cheese, says she’s not sure if this will be a one-off. “We’re focused on today,” she says. “We’ll see how it goes.”

Kraft’s last Twitter-related marketing push, which ran earlier this month, was a big success, O’Mara says. In that campaign, called “Mac & Jinx,” Kraft identified pairs of people who tweeted about the brand at the same time and then contacted them. The first of the pair to respond got prizes, including a t-shirt and five boxes of Mac & Cheese. The effort propelled Mac & Cheese into a trending topic for a day and garnered more than 1.5 million tweets, according to the company.

O’Mara adds that consumers’ expectations and their ability to comment immediately has forced marketers like herself to step up their game. Says O’Mara: “I think social media has given us the opportunity to engage in real time.” Indeed, several marketers of late, including Toyota’s Prius, Coca-Cola and various Academy Awards advertisers, have created outreach efforts with real-time communication in mind.

Kraft has taken more risks with marketing Mac & Cheese after hiring Crispin last March. Meanwhile, Crispin is coming off a rough start to the year after losing its Groupon account due to an ill-received Super Bowl ad, as well as losing the Burger King account it held for several years.