Running out of cereal is usually a problem that one must face on his own. But when David Berkowitz awoke to the dilemma one morning this October, he got some support from an unexpected source. After reading a tweet about his irritation, Edge Shave Gel sent him enough cereal that it should be a very long time before he runs out again.

“I’m still eating the cereal they sent me, so the positive brand association continues,” says Berkowitz.

Since September, 234 people have benefited from similar random acts of kindness from the @EdgeShaveZone Twitter account. As part of Edge’s Anti-Irritation Campaign, a team of two devotes its full-time efforts to seeking, responding to, and relieving irritation across Twitter(), much of which is conveyed using Edge’s #soirritating hashtag. The team has given out everything from iPads and computers to megaphones and dancing panda YouTube() videos in their efforts to “solve irritation.” One woman tweeted that she had voices in her head that were speaking in Spanish — Edge responded with the gift of a Spanish/English dictionary.

In about three months, @EdgeShaveZone has gathered about 1,500 followers, the #soirritating hashtag has been used about 6,800 times, and attention from numerous media outlets has contributed to mounting buzz — all of which likely contributed to Edge’s decision to continue the campaign throughout 2011. Mashable() recently spoke with the team at Edelman Digital, that runs the campaign, about the factors that have contributed to its success.

---

Using Twitter, Not Changing Twitter

---

When was the last time you used Twitter to rave about a product you use every day? Most of us do that quite often. Designing a Twitter campaign that both promotes a brand effectively and fits the platform can be challenging. Instead of trying to change the way that people use the platform, the #soirritating campaign builds on top of what Twitter users are already doing: complaining.“We picked Twitter because we noticed that a truth about Twitter was that people were always talking about how irritated they were about things, and we have a product that matched that truth, which was anti-irritation, so that was a good place for us,” says Katie Facada, the copywriter who composes tweets for @EdgeShaveZone.

---