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Category: Branding

Building Your Brand In Facebook

Unless you’ve been in a digital cave you’ve probably heard of Facebook’s amazing penetration in Canada. Like many of its earlier counterparts, Facebook provides some great opportunities to build your brand online.

Facebook Advertising Options

The first place to start is with Facebook’s self-service advertiser option. Facebook provides the ability for advertisers to create self-serve “Facebook Flyers”. You’ve probably seen this in your Facebook dashboard inter-mixed with your friend updates. The flyers that I see most often are for the Sony Playstation or the Honda F1 groups. It’s fairly easy to create these flyers but it’s not clear how often they are used. When I informally polled some Facebook users, most people had no recollection of ever seeing these links so I’m not certain what kind of response rate they generate.

Facebook also provides a custom integration option. In most cases this solution involves developing a branded group. Both Sony and Honda F1 have branded Facebook groups. Ironically, these branded groups are more difficult to find than user-created groups on the same topics. Custom integration is not available without signing an agreement with Facebook. The costs for a branded group are not directly revealed but it’s rumoured to be expensive.

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Hillary’s Misguided Foray into User Generated Content

Hillary_for_presidentOne of my favourite things to do is watch political parties and candidates – or companies, or TV networks – jump on what they think is a bandwagon and then misapply the principles that made it a success in the first place. That’s why next season’s network television lineups are full of Heroes-themed supernatural content and freaks.  What audiences have responded to in Heroes is a fantastic concept, great characters and a propulsive narrative, not the fact that the characters on the show have cool powers.

It’s much the same with user generated content. Just because it’s a tactic doesn’t mean you should use it. Especially when your strategic application actually succeeds in reinforcing a major perception liability.

For those of who you haven’t been following along, Hillary Clinton is currently running for President of the United States. Her critics say that she lacks a clear vision and that she tends to leap on the bandwagon. On her website May 21,  she launched a poll to allow visitors to choose a fairly major part of her campaign.

I don’t want to be overly harsh, because there are a number of great things about the fact that Hillary’s running and that she is trying to integrate her audience into her campaign. It’s the topic she’s chosen for her foray into UGC that’s troubling and, unfortunately, it highlights some deeper issues with her public persona.

Hillary wants you, or at least the US  public, to pick her campaign song.

Yes, you too can help craft Hillary’s campaign by picking her campaign theme song!
(And no, you don’t have to be in the US to have your say! I voted!)

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More Brands Entering Second Life

In case you haven’t visited your favourite metaverse recently, here are a few of the brands that have entered Second Life:

Coca-Cola launched its Virtual Thirst program … a design contest that solicits ideas for an in-world vending machine that dispenses, not Coca-Cola, but the ESSENCE of Coca-Cola: refreshment, joy, unity and experience. Coca-Cola also has a MySpace page and a YouTube channel to support the contest. Visit the Virtual Thirst Pavilion in-world.

Virtualthirst

Lacoste, close on the heels of L’Oreal Paris’ beauty pageant, is holding their own avatar model search.  Six avatars will be chosen to share a purse of a million Linden dollars and will pose in unique Lacoste clothing for a photo shoot.  Find out more on the Lacoste site.

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