Adding Good Humor to Social Media Engagement

August 1, 2014





When I decided to write a blog post about the Good Humor car, I wasn’t sure if it should be a food and travel piece or a social media marketing piece. Because all our communication – until I was chomping down ice cream from the mobile Good Humor car – was via Twitter, I decided to put it here.

Background Facts You Need to Know

Scott Monty left his job at Ford Motor Company and was hired by Shift Communications. The fine folks at Shift had a party for Scott and I attended that party…but before the party started, there was an incident (more on that below).

I was teaching a group of Italian students – from Milan mostly – at Boston University as part of the Cattolica program. They come over here to learn from professors like Steve Quigley, Todd van Hoosear and myself. The program lasts three weeks or so and the graduation was today – Friday, August 1, 2014.

Dave Cutler is no relation to me.

I don’t speak any Italian.

The Events as They Unfolded – Mostly

I arrived early at the Shift party for Scott Monty. I sat in my car in a parking space on Newbury Street and invited Dave Cutler to accompany me while I harassed people on Twitter and ruined the environment with my A/C. Dave joined me and we had a grand time chatting about marketing and food and other topics. Then, the Good Humor FREE ICE CREAM car came to a stop at the light by my car. I sprung from my car to the Good Humor car – see the photo below and the Tweet from Dave Cutler.

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As a result of Dave’s Tweet, @GoodHumor started following me and asked me if they could bring some treats to my office. What do you think I said?

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The fun escalated because my office for the summer (remember #BUCattolica) was the BU campus and my ‘staff’ consisted of 32 students from Italy. So I chose the graduation date and time for the Good Humor visit. SUCCESS!

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The students heralded me as a hero and welcomed me to visit Italy. The Good Humor guy was thrilled to provide tasty treats to such fun people. And as a final lesson in my marketing communications class, I proved social tools can provide a return on investment.

Here are a few more photos. I welcome your comments on social interactions that have worked for you.

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