Wednesday, April 20, 2011

Is the Nasonex Bee on Twitter? Or Is This an Impostor?

A couple of years ago, I suggested that pharmaceutical companies can leverage their brands' assets via Twitter by launching brand mascot accounts. I predicted, for example, that the Nasonex bee character would start "Tweeting like a little bird" (see "Nasonex Bee May Usher In a Whole New Way to do FDA-friendly Pharma Tweets").

I did a Twitter search for "nasonex" and discovered that there is indeed a @Nasonex_Bee Twitter account that describes the fun-loving mascot this way: "Flying around pushing overpriced prescription meds, and showing up on your TV screen in obnoxious commercials far more often than you can actually tolerate me." Below is the screen shot of the account's twitter home page:


Obviously, this is a fake Twitter account.

Brand mascot impostors are rampant on Twitter according to Advertising Age (see "Twitter Identity Theft Strikes Brand Mascots"). "Many of the most-loved brand mascots, from the Pillsbury Doughboy to Tony the Tiger, are on Twitter in some respects, but not in any official capacity," notes AdAge. "Everyday people not affiliated with the brands have picked up those familiar names and cartoon faces, as many marketers have left them idle. @TheChefBoyardee, for example, is foul-mouthed, wears a chef's hat and applied to Charlie Sheen's #tigerblood internship."

The @Nasonex_Bee Twitter account is locked/protected -- you can't follow or see its tweets without first sending a request to do so, which I did (no answer yet). The account has only 1 follower.

It seems that the Packaged Goods industry is not doing a good job protecting their brand assets and neither is the pharmaceutical industry.

If you know of any fake or real pharma brand mascot Twitter accounts, please let me know.

1 comment:

  1. Hello @PharmaGuy, In my humble opinion:

    #Pharma & #Twitter: Can Balanced Messg (Claims V Common AEs) Be Made in 140 Characters or Less? If Banner Ads Can't, Tweets Can't. #Unlike.

    @JackieWellbaum

    ReplyDelete

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