If there is any doubt that Twitter – and the millions of tweets it generates – is having a marketing impact, talk to movie studio executives. A few years ago, even a bad summer movie had a chance for decent box office in the first two weekends, but today, that time frame has narrowed to a single Friday night, Eastern Standard Time.

Using Twitter, disappointed movie-goers get the word out immediately – and exponentially. According to reports on NPR and on movie news Web sites, “Land of the Lost” and “Bruno” fell well short of projected earnings on their release weekends, due in part to negative tweeting.

On the other hand, movies can experience “marketing velocity” from positive tweets as well.  The movie “Up” had a successful opening weekend, due in part to a demographic – adults without children – that the studio had not anticipated. According to Dick Cook, the chairman of Walt Disney Studios,”Clearly, there’s a Twitter effect.”

Hopefully, movie studios rise to the challenge by producing better films. Until then… power to the peeps!

Yes, the Wright Brothers have been sighted at the Dayton International Airport. Orville and Wilbur are the Official Spokesmen for the airport and why not? They did invent flight here…that’s why they call Ohio the birthplace of aviation. Hey… it’s on our license plate.

There are some really cool things going on in this ad: first, the brothers were filmed in front of a green screen one day and the background was shot at the airport the next. The second cool thing – most of the people in the background are part of the Nova team…yep, our 3 seconds of fame. And we have talent! Third, writing the scripts was a blast. Giving Orville and Wilbur personalities, developing the camaraderie that only brothers have and staging them with modern technology was challenging and fun at the same time. (You know those boys would be early adopters – they invented the flying machine for heaven’s sake!).

Check it out!

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When my son was in kindergarten and learning about punctuation, he was taught that an exclamation point was an excitement mark.  I thought it was a clever move on the teacher’s part. After all, five year olds understand excitement. Over time, the overuse of the ‘excitement mark’ has become one of my pet peeves.  It may have been a necessity in old Batman episodes…  ”Holy hankerchief, Batman! It was right under our noses and we blew it!”  But, there’s no need to shout (except in late night infomercials when you’re trying to wake up viewers).  Let’s reserve exclamation points for when they are truly deserved and start punctuating our messages with copy that generates excitement because of its quality.