Dive Brief:

• Nestle used Sunday’s summer solstice as a theme for the first branded marketing effort utilizing Periscope, Twitter’s live video streaming app.
• The campaign was based around the confectioner’s Drumstick brand and included numerous video streams promoting the ice cream product.
• Similar to brands marketing via Vine, Nestle hired Periscope personalities to stream video of summertime scenes, such as visiting amusement parks and enjoying backyard barbeques.

Dive Insight:

Periscope, Twitter’s live video streaming app competing directly with Meerkat and to a lesser extent with video apps such as Vine, Instagram and Snapchat, doesn’t currently support paid ads, but the first Periscope-specific ad campaign ran Sunday. Nestle used the platform to promote its Drumstick brand with a theme based around the summer solstice. Similar to campaigns marketers have executed on other video apps, Nestle hired known Periscope personalities to stream video of typical summer activities such as backyard barbeques and visiting amusement parks.

The sponsored streams included the hashtag #ad to let viewers know what they were watching was sponsored -- an approach marketers already engage in with sponsored Vine, Instagram and Twitter content. Since Periscope is owned by Twitter, app accounts are connected to the platform and automatically post tweets with links to the live streams. To leverage this, Nestle purchased promoted tweets to amplify the campaign. The brand also hired 100 Twitter influencers to tweet about the campaign.