Kellogg’s has setup a pop-up shop in London’s Soho where customers can get buy their new type of crisps and pay with a Tweet on Twitter.
The publicity stunt runs until this Friday, and is looking to harness a Twitter user’s  to spread the word about their new snack. And, of course, because it is using Twitter, it will gather a lot of attention from the blogosphere too, such as here on Money Watch.
The shop encourages customers to use the Twitter hashtag #TweetShop so that they can keep track of mentions, and customers are also reminded that they should add the hashtag #spon, which is the Advertising Standards Agency’s (ASA) recommended way of showing that a Tweet has been paid for in some way. There have been a few high profile cases of celebrities sending sponsored Tweets without declaring them to the followers, therefore falling foul of ASA guidelines.
Here’s the TweetShop in action:
Whilst this is to be a short-run marketing stunt, it is worth thinking about how this could be taken further.
This “social media currency” could be used to offer discounts when customers are willing to Tweet about or recommend the products they’re purchasing to their online friends. Naturally, the bigger the Twitter following, Facebook likes, or whatever measure of social media influence, the greater the discount could be. In some ways, this isn’t anything new; it’s simply a more viral method of referral, such as refer-a-friend schemes that companies already run, and for which they often provide incentives to the referrer.