Social Lift for Brands Mentioned During Letterman’s Finale

By Karen Fratti 

Of all the things to talk about during David Letterman’s show, everyone was busy making Coke ad jokes about the ending. According to Amobee Brand Intelligence, there were 275 tweets about the indirect brand winner of the night. Other brands that made their way around social media were Taco Bell and Scientology. From Amobee:

Taco Bell, which has seen digital consumption increase 103% on May 21 compared to May 20 and Scientology which saw consumption increase 444% in the same time period. With precious limited time to allocate on the final show, Letterman elected to re-air a 1996 sketch where he pranked people working at the drive thru window of a Taco Bell. With Scientology, Letterman joked during his final episode that his job was going to be becoming the face of Scientology. The comment wouldn’t have necessarily generated that much attention, except Scientology, as it turned out, had also decided to advertise during the episode and the juxtaposition of Dave taking a shot at an advertiser he probably didn’t even know he had became a real conversation starter on Twitter. Scientology mentions on Twitter increased 633% from 54 to 396 during the final compared to the preceding hour and a half.

Letterman was never a “real conversation” starter on social like other late-night hosts. But on May 20, leading up to and during the final show, there were 201,465 tweets around him, resulting in three times as much consumption of the Letterman brand than there has been with any other late night host in the period from February 21 until this week. Amobee’s ranked other top late night moments during that period:

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  • David Letterman, May 21 (Day After Final Episode)

  • David Letterman, May 20 (Day of Final Episode)

  • Jimmy Kimmel, May 3 (Pacquiao/Mayweather Fight)

  • Trevor Noah, March 30 (Announced As New Daily Show Host)

  • James Corden, May 15 (One Direction Appearance)

  • Jimmy Kimmel, March 13 (Obama Reads Mean Tweets)

  • David Letterman, May 19 (Penultimate Episode Airs)

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