Holiday “Deals”: Best Buy Promotes Interscope CDs With “Free” TweetDeck App
Best Buy is offering a deal
for consumers to get a free TweetDeck app with the purchase of a CD under Interscope Records, which includes artists such as 50 Cent, Flyleaf, Weezer, OneRepublic, Black Eyed Peas, Timbaland and others. With the purchase of one of the CDs, which range from $10.99 to $13.99, the buyer will receive an Interscope branded TweetDeck application that is pre-loaded to connect them to the social media content of the 16 various artists.
Best Buy is promoting this as a “Special Offer.” You get a “free Tweetdeck app when you order a CD.” The irony of the deal is that it’s not really a deal. You can download the regular TweetDeck app for free, both as a desktop application or as an iPhone app, and then create a list for the 16 artists to follow. I created aTwitter list of an assortment of the artists whose CDs are being peddled within five minutes.
While more manual labor may be needed to add the MySpace and Facebook accounts for these artists (TweetDeck supports both social networks within its apps), the deal almost seems like a hoax. Except it’s just bad marketing. It’s generally not a good idea to make a big deal about giving away something for free that is free to begin with.
To be fair, TweetDeck allows many brands to create their own customized versions of the desktop app. For instance, we offer a TechCrunch-branded TweetDeck app here. It’s really free (no CD purchase required). But then again, we’re not famous rock stars.
