I recently participated in two social media-enabled promotions: The clever “social augmented reality” app created by OfficeMax and co-branded with their TUL markers, and an Old Navy “Thanks a Million” coupon for 50% off outerwear. The former was really cool, but somewhat puzzling in its execution. It captured an image of me via webcam and mined my Facebook profile to create a little movie about me illustrated with TUL markers. Cute, right? After playing with it, I wanted to share it to Facebook, but the share link wasn’t working. Stranger yet, the entire application lived exclusively on the OfficeMax website. No effort was made to get me to “Like” OfficeMax on Facebook, something that would have let them enter into a long-term relationship with me. In fact, when I searched OfficeMax on Facebook, it appeared the company doesn’t even have an official profile—at least not one more with more than a few hundred members! Office Depot and Staples are on the social network, but OfficeMax could easily acquire more fans than their competition with such a potentially viral promotion, an accompanying Facebook ad buy and a share button that actually works. It’s a lost opportunity.
By contrast, today’s Old Navy promotion had no bells and whistles of any kind—just a really compelling offer. The discount clothing chain was celebrating its one millionth Facebook fan with a coupon good for 50% off any one piece of outerwear. By the time I’d clicked “Like” and printed my coupon, they were 25,000 fans over their goal. Rewarding your fans with an exclusive offer is a great way to provide them with value and spur sales.
It shouldn’t come as any surprise that an email from the developer alerted me to the OfficeMax app and multiple tweets and retweets on Twitter sent me to the Old Navy Facebook page—demonstrating once more that social media promotions must heed the first rule of social media (make it easy to share) as well as those of branded promotions (make it compelling).
Alma Klein is a Creative Director at Arc Worldwide. Follow her on Twitter @marketingmommy or her personal blog, Marketing Mommy.
Alma,
I’ve been active in the social media space for three years now, and I’m still often baffled by FB. I’m not surprised that so many companies spend hundreds of thousands of dollars on convoluted campaigns that don’t result in clear share actions that would impact their metrics.
Your conclusion is so sound. To succeed in social media, brands must have a compelling offer and a simple call to action so that it goes viral.
Vanessa