Charlie Sheen Wants You to Buy His #Tigerblood

In Karolina Nowak’s post “More Than Just 15 Seconds of Fame” she blasts how reality shows and the power of twitter have turned semi-famous people into media monsters who refuse to let their 15-seconds of fame last only 15-seconds. She also mentions the abilities of these people to pique our interest in not only their irrelevant lives, but also in the products they choose to consume. Our increasing reliance on technology and social media to shape our decision-making allows for these attention whores (pardon my language) to represent different companies and peddle their products.

Furthering my post on the power of twitter, comes the companies that are currently making money off these people. Advertising companies such as ad.ly have been able to capitalize on celebrities incessant need to stay in the spotlight and companies need of exposure and have combined the two into making a business out of Facebook and Twitter. Currently ad.ly represents over 1000 different celebrities who are apparently willing to advertise for your company, including the likes of Kim Kardashian, Paris Hilton, Vinny from the Jersey Shore, and Charlie Sheen.

Charlie Sheen in particular is quite the catch for the company, as he recently broke a Guinness book of World Record by getting 1,000,000 followers in 25 hours on Twitter and currently has over 2,000,000. (I guess controversy as a selling point works just as well online as off.) So who was the first to use Charlie Sheen’s online advertising? Well, this afternoon he tweeted for an internship position as his social media marketer (Scott Rolufs – get in on this!) which leads you to internships.com, the first advertisement from the bi-winning, tigerblood filled warlock, aka the quickly-spiralling Sheen. (As a side note, Twitter is quite possibly the greatest way to watch someone’s downfall in realtime). I suppose as the popularity of social media marketing rises so will the opportunities for how to advertise your product. It is a natural progression to use a website with so much exposure to try and capture a new aspect of your consumer base.