Since the ClickZ team is a bunch of '80s babies, we decided to center this edition of Tweets of the Week on Back to the Future Day. Which brands elicited a "Great Scott!" reaction, and which ones were just buttheads?
Nothing took over Twitter this week quite like Back to the Future, since October 21, 2015 is the day Marty McFly saves his family’s future in the movie’s sequel.
The #BackToTheFuture hashtag generated more than 1.2 million Tweets. So many of those came from various hashtag-hijacking brands eager to show off their creative tributes. Therefore, we decided to do a content takeover for Tweets of the Week, in honor of the 1985 classic.
We know what you’re thinking: where were we on Wednesday, the actual Back to the Future Day? We could say we were at the prom with our mom, having accidentally gotten stuck in 1955, but that wouldn’t be true.
Rather than do it in real-time like everyone else, we just decided to save our post for Tweets of the Week to make sure we’d be able to see everything. Did you notice how many of those round-ups seemed to feature the same brands? That’s because they weren’t the best Back to the Future Tweets; they were the best ones that had been tweeted before the articles were posted on Wednesday. See where we’re going with this?
So having seen everything brands had to offer – we think; there were more than 1 million Tweets, after all – here is the definitive list of the winners and losers of Back to the Future Day.
No brand did Back to the Future Day quite like Nike. The sportswear giant created limited-edition digital, self-lacing sneakers – just like the ones in the movie. The first pair was obviously given to Michael J. Fox, with proceeds from the others going to his Parkinson’s research charity.
Nike didn’t use the hashtag or even the movie’s name. Tweeting at Michael J. Fox was enough to get 18,000 favorites and 20,000 retweets. The brand later retweeted Fox’s Tweets and pinned another one of its own, leading back to the Nike Mag’s website.
.@realmikefox see you tomorrow.
— Nike (@Nike) October 21, 2015
If you can imagine the future, you can create it. ⠀⠀⠀ ⠀ Find out about pair no. 1 at https://t.co/ptkErznzjl pic.twitter.com/Gi6UMNsNML
— Nike (@Nike) October 21, 2015
Calvin Klein was Marty McFly’s alias in 1955 so the retailer was obligated to participate. If it hadn’t, it would have ended up on the losers list, on principle.
A fun video kicked off a series of Tweets, in which Calvin Klein highlighted its 2015 take on the teenage characters’ outfits. It was a clever idea that ultimately drove users to product pages.
.@isaaclikes+@jennyalbright as a modern day Marty+Jennifer. Shop their looks [US]: https://t.co/qE3AvuStYh #BTTF2015 pic.twitter.com/daWjhS0Lz4
— Calvin Klein (@CalvinKlein) October 21, 2015
Domino’s proves that a brand doesn’t necessarily have to have an obvious tie-in in order to be a relevant participant in a pop culture conversation. Yesterday, the company rolled out its new pizza delivery car, complete with an oven, which the Tweet compared to a DeLorean.
The car is futuristic enough to fit into the theme and novel enough to appeal to users. But mostly, the Tweet inserted Domino’s into the conversation seamlessly. By tweeting the pizza emoji though, did Domino’s order a pizza to its own headquarters?
We saw the DeLorean door and thought, why not an oven door?
