Occupy Wall Street, the Brand

Many conservative commentators -- and even some liberal wags -- have complained about how mushy the Occupy Wall Street movement can seem. ("What are their specific demands?" Or: "They have way too many weird and specific demands!") But I think what's remarkable about the movement -- and is a huge part of the reason it's gained traction so quickly -- is that "Occupy" has turned out to be an incredibly powerful and extensible brand. From Occupy Together as a general rubric for protests beyond Wall Street , to the slew of city-specific protests (Occupy San Francisco, Occupy DC, Occupy London, etc.), the notion of Occupy clearly resonates. Ad Age asked our editorial partner Trendrr, the social-media monitoring firm, to look at Occupy specifically on Twitter. What you see in the chart below reflects a roll-up of 35 terms associated with the movement, from #occupywallstreet to #occupylondon to #O15, the designated hashtag for the Oct. 15 global Occupy protests. The one day peak so far: 794,066 Occupy-related tweets on, as you'd expect, the 15th. It's also worth noting that Occupy has been a very visually-driven movement. Tons of people attending Occupy protests appear to be armed with cell phones with camera and/or video capabilities, resulting in a rather breathtaking proliferation of visual documentation. If you do just a basic "Occupy Wall Street " search on YouTube right now you'll get some 37,000 results. (Note the endless postings and repostings of some of the more notorious and disturbing videos of police brutality at protests, particularly in New York.) Trendrr did a broader search, including duplicates, of Occupy-related videos; the tally as of Monday hit 123,832. Simon Dumenco is the "Media Guy" media columnist for Advertising Age. You can follow him on Twitter @simondumenco.

Occupy Wall Street, the Brand

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