I sympathise with the school yard concerns you initially mentioned Nick, however I believe it is the friends that you have that determine your experience using Facebook. I think this is important for marketers to keep in mind. Bryan I understand your intolerance with marketing through Facebook and I think it is safe to say you are not alone in your desire to avoid it or only experience it through the receipt of such messages being through friends (online Word of Mouth). In saying this, I believe the key to marketers getting consumers to become friends with their brand or product on Facebook may be in addressing a fundamental consumer question: What is in it for me?
If being a friend with an brand or product on Facebook means being at the forefront of getting information, special deals and invitations to events the brand are holding – the idea of befriending a brand becomes more appealing. This also addresses Nick’s second question – the hook or reason to visit the site. If status updates for the brand are interesting, interactive and perhaps exclusive, like a clothes brand releasing its new line at a certain venue or a TV show revealing a hint to an upcoming storyline, it will give the friends of the brand reasons to continually revisit the site.
While I recognise Bryan’s argument that creativity means fitting an idea into a limited framework, there is successful ways of doing this. Like James Boag who relates to his target constituent, other companies have found innovative ways to communicate with their friends. An article on http://www.mediaverso.com/ outlines some of these creative Facebook marketing campaigns.
· Connecting a Facebook social game into strategy. Microsoft’s Bing search engine attempted this through the popular Facebook game FarmVille. If a user became a fan of Bing’s Facebook page (by clicking on a Bing advertisement located on the bottom of the FarmVille landing page) they would receive FarmVille cash. Bing’s Facebook page went from 100,000 to 500.000 users in one day. The question then becomes how to get consumers to keep accessing the Bing page after this.
· Appeal to altruism. On Valentine’s day Target retail stores gave away one million dollars to a charity chosen by their Facebook fans. They used a real time graph on their Facebook page to see how the charities competed with each another. Kellogs launched a similar initiative.
· Use Facebook to give consumers access to freebies. Jamacia’s biggest cellular phone company Digicel offered free phone credit and handsets through their Facebook page. They placed a code on their page and the first person who dialed the code won free phone credit or handset.
· Connect your page with real life events and activities. Red Bull’s Facebook page has a game called the Red Bull Stash, where people can search for cases of Red Bull that have been hidden all over the country. This American based game required entering a zip code to get clues to the stash location in a particular city. The people who found the stash in each city would then be on their way to winning an unmentioned grand prize.
Another example used in the article is Domino’s pizza. Using Facebook they launched “The Pizza Turnaround” where they listened to customer complaints and then acted upon them. They then put up commercials with people telling Domino’s how to improve their pizza and how Dominoes have taken their feedback into consideration. This strategy works in line with research that suggests the strongest most influential word of mouth is caused when dissatisfied customers are turned around by extraordinary responses to their expression of dissatisfaction (Silverman, 2001; Allsop et al, 2007).
The Word Of Mouth Marketing Association (WOMMA) suggest that a constructive ways to get people talking about your brand is through transparent conversation & information sharing with consumers on blogs or other forums. Facebook is a perfect mechanism for other this and other WOMMA recommendations such as co-creation - involving consumers in marketing strategy (for example by allowing them to create commercials).
Another element of ‘what’s in it for me’ comes from Nick and Rebecca’s arguments about brand creation and protection. In line with Rebecca’s argument about protecting our own brand, it can be argued that who an individual is friends with or fans of brand wise can be used to define their personality. You are sending a completely different message about yourself if you are friends with ‘Coco Channel’ as opposed to say the ‘Penrith Panthers’. If your brand successfully responds to its target audience and builds upon its needs, it can mean that your consumers will want its friendship on Facebook as part of creating their Facebook identity.
So of those Facebook users – who are you friends with brand wise and what do you think that says about you? Have you found yourself not adding a brand as a friend because you don’t want to be affiliated with what it represents? Have you judged other people for being friends with certain brands? I can’t really talk as the only brand friend I have is UWS because of work... but that’s a blog for another time.
Allsop, D.T., Basset, B.R. & Hoskins, J.A. (2007). Word-of-Mouth Research: Principles and Applications. Journal of Advertising Research, 47 (4): 398-411
Silverman, G. (2001). The Power of Word of Mouth. Direct Marketing, 64 (5): 47-52
WOMMA, Word of Mouth Marketing Association. (2007). An Introduction to WOM Marketing with definitions. Accessed April 2, 2010 http://womma.org/wom101/
http://www.mediaverso.com/the-best-new-facebook-marketing-campaigns-in-2010.html
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