Cool by Association

Here is an example of another companies advertising dollars promoting the social giant. In this TV spot for the launch of the Palm Pre, Sprint uses Facebook to show that the social network is accessible and live on the smartphone. The commercial shows a day in the life of a rock vocalist, as her Facebook page gets updated and refreshed throughout the day. Most of the 30-second spot belongs to Facebook, until a voice-over comes on and reveals that the ad is actually for a handset.

This is not the first time we have seen Facebook used to connect the audience with a brand. Apple built an entire 30-second commercial last year around the popular social network, showing how to access and interact with the application on the iPhone.

So is it smart to target Facebook users? Through association with the social-media icon, brands can become immediately relevant to a loyal user base (half of all facebook users log in at least once a day). Brand association has been araound for a long time and if its the right product/service then in a nutshell..Yes. But remember direct association alone is not enough. Brands must deliver on their promises and be viable to succeed in what is a very saturated and educated marketplace.

 

Carl Jr. & User Generated Content

User Generated Content (UGC) is a real buzz word among marketers and agencies so I thought Id give you an example of it in action. For their new Portobello Mushroom Six-Dollar Burger ad campaign, Carl Jr. will use UGC from popular YouTube faces. This is not the first time they have thought outside the box or tried something risky (remember the Paris Hilton car wash).

In this campaign Carl’s Jr. has used nine YouTube celebrities who combined have 3.8 million YouTube subscribers, 590,000 followers on Twitter and 25,000 Facebook fans (according to Adweek). Thats a whole lot of audience to reach.

In implemeting this campaign Carl’s Jr. only brief to the YouTube stars was to mention the burger, tell viewers how they eat their burgers, and then pose the question to the viewers. This freedom allowed the YouTube stars to do the video in their fashion to reach their audience, while encouraging viewers to take part in the fun with a video response of their own truly making this a social campaign.

Now lets look at the ripple effect this could have...firstly viewers will willingly watch these video ads. Secondly, there is a good chance that viewers will then watch the other YouTube celebs’ videos (That equates to nine watched Carl’s Jr. ads per user!). Thirdly, they will then compare and discuss the ads amongst themselves. And finally some will create and distribute their own video responses...I think the you get the picture.

I am looking forward to seeing the results of this campaign and will keep you posted...in the meantime have a look at the ads yourself.

 



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