In Texas, a Kiwi encounters Charlie Sheen's online marketing crew

Vaughn Davis -- a one-time air force pilot turned Y&R creative director, and now owner of advertising and social agency The Goat Farm -- is in Austin, Texas for South by Southwest (known as SXSW in the Twitter age). Most famous for making Flight of the Conchords' name in the US, and its film element, the festival is now equally known for its "interactive" element (Microsoft used it to launch IE9 yesterday). Mr Davis filed this report for NBR. Incidentally, if you want to see a rare example of Twitter advertising (from our friends at HP, among others), run a Twitter search for @SXSW. - CK

Most people have never heard of Arnie Gullov-Singh and Sean (warning: excellent surname ahead) Rad. A few more might have heard of their social media talent agency, Ad.ly. You’ve almost certainly heard of at least one of their 1000+ celebrity clients though: Charlie Sheen.

Rad and Gullov-Singh shared a stage at Austin Texas interactive festival South By South West earlier this week with social media author (Engage!) Brian Solis and Klout founder Joe Fernandez. (Joe’s scariest insight: the first person to score a perfect 100 on Klout’s social media influence rating scale was Justin Bieber – so Klout scores are percentages of the Bieb!)

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It was Ad.ly that first got Sheen onto Twitter after being approached by the actor’s management. Whether he was just looking for a new post-TV outlet for his peculiar brand of creative expression or a new revenue stream isn’t clear. He got both though. The @charliesheen account is famous for having hit a million followers faster than any other, before he’d even tweeted. (It’s up to 2.6 million now.) Then a week into his #tigerblood infused Twitter career, Sheen tweeted he was looking for an intern.

An intern? Who would want to apply for that? Plenty of people, according to Rad, including people already working as interns in The Whitehouse! (The Washington, DC Presidential residence, not the actual Whitehouse in Auckland.)

In the first hour following Sheen’s tweet, internships.com received 74,000 applications for the position. And there’s the thing: #tigerbloodintern was an ad for internships.com. The hiring portal paid Sheen $1 million US for two tweets. While it’s not as much as he received for an episode of Two and a Half Men, it probably didn’t take as much work.

Rad and Gullov-Singh, naturally, tout the whole #tigerblood thing as a huge success for internships.com and reckon the $1million investment compares favourably to a Google buy (they’d be sitting at around $1-$2 a click) or Superbowl ad ($20 million plus ad production). How many of the 74,000 “applicants” or the 500,000+ people who clicked on internships.com’s link will turn into customers isn’t clear. But in a #tigerblood world maybe quantity is what counts. And with 1000 other celebrities on the books and this year’s biggest social media sensation on its hands, Ad.ly may well be counting the profits for some time to come.