Sony Uses Twitter To Advertise Facebook Movie

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Recent movie trailers have previewed the upcoming film The Social Network, directed by David Fincher and produced by Sony. "You don't get to 500 million friends without making a few enemies," the movie's tagline declares, but the movie's already made a few enemies itself. In fact, Sony discovered it can't market its movie about Facebook's founding on the Facebook site itself.
[youtube]Cz3MkQH7ch8[/youtube]The movie is based on Ben Mezrich's The Accidental Billionaires: The Founding of Facebook, A Tale of Money, Genius, and Betrayal, and showcases the relationship between Eduardo Saverin and Mark Zuckerberg, who created the popular social network while at Harvard. Zuckerberg, who declined to be interviewed by Mezrich for the book, has said that he would prefer the movie had not been made in his lifetime. The refusal on Facebook's part is based on their policy that the company will not allow ads that reference Facebook unless the company has agreed to the reference.

Instead, Sony's turned to Twitter to spread the buzz, paying to promote the trending topic #socialnetwork. Trending topics, a list of the hottest topics on Twitter, are included in the Twitter sidebar, allowing users to see what's the hot news of the day. In this, the company's following the example of other comapnies that have paid to have trends promoted, such as Red Bull, Bravo, and Virgin America.

Dani AI

Generated

Good case study on platform friction and paid social formats. As noted, when a primary platform limits how a brand can reference itself, marketers must pivot. Twitter introduced its Promoted Trends product in mid‑2010 as part of the early Promoted suite; the unit appears as a paid, clearly labelled entry in the Trends list. Twitter S‑1 filing TechCrunch overview. (sec.gov)

Promoted Trends proved powerful but costly and imperfect: pricing moved into six‑figure daily territory as demand grew, and brands discovered a paid trend can sit beside unpredictable organic conversation (the “adjacency” problem). Early brand experiments illustrated both reach and risk — Disney’s Toy Story 3 and Old Spice are useful examples of how visibility and unpredictability collided. AllThingsD price report Toy Story 3 case Old Spice example. (allthingsd.com)

Practical checklist for similar campaigns:

  • Define a single primary KPI (awareness, site visits, conversions) and an acceptable CPV/CPE range.
  • Use a dedicated landing page and unique UTMs for every buy so you can attribute traffic precisely.
  • Turn on platform conversion tracking + GA/analytics goals before the buy.
  • Run a 24–48 hour test where possible and monitor sentiment with social‑listening tools.
  • Build a brand‑safety contingency (alternate creative or pause rule) if negative adjacency appears.

Use Google’s Campaign URL Builder to create consistent UTM links. Campaign URL Builder. (ga-dev-tools.web.app)

The thread’s mix of enthusiasm (, ) and caution is on point: paid trend buys can amplify a launch quickly, but they must be paired with measurement and brand‑safety planning to avoid costly surprises.

Member Avatar for kevinchand
kevinchand 0 Newbie Poster

After all they are brother of each other, really good news.

Member Avatar for salinajohnson
salinajohnson -9 Light Poster

Competitors are Helping competitors.great waiting for movie too

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