In Defence of Footballer Tweets

I've heard a lot of people talk about how footballers should stop posting on twitter, but I find this an odd reaction.

We complain that football players are overpaid, that they don't understand the game or the fans, they only care about money and cars; yet when they spent chunks of their free time talking directly to fans we act as if they are doing something wrong.

Why is it right for Stephen Fry to use twitter and not Robbie Savage? Is it just down to presumed intelligence? Your idea of talent versus someone elses? Stop being so pretentious, twitter isn't yours to dictate who joins. Just because you presume a footballer is stupid or full of ego doesn't mean it is so. who made you king of the internets?

The best footballer on twitter (in more ways than one perhaps) is definitely Rio Ferdinand, one of the biggest names at the biggest club in the world; finds the time to invite questions and discuss things with the twitter community. That's the sort of commitment and engagement that we can learn from, and should be encouraging more of. I would hazard he is contributing more to twitter than most of the people who criticise him for being there.

Next time we talk to clients about putting air freshner brands or bathroom cleaner brands or weed killer brands (etc etc) onto social spaces, let's try and remember not to be hypocritical in criticising others...

Adtional Security...

Watching part of Britz last night made me think about how the way you treat people can affect what they become. The drama implied strongly that if you treat minorities like terrorists you will actually force them away and give them more encouragement to do so.

I started to wonder whether that is the same in adland. One of the things that most irritates me about ads is how many of them appear to treat the public as if they are stupid; as if they need everything spelling out and repeated s-l-o-w-l-y to be able to understand it. I wonder if this attitude actually causes the public to see ads as dumb, and not to read them with any sense of intelligence.

Does dumbed down advertising damage advertising that treats people with respect?