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Facebook Sacrifices Whopper Application
Facebook is a hugely popular social networking site. You’ve probably heard of it. And the big deal with Facebook lately is their developer network. Companies and individuals alike can write the code for their own Facebook application.
There are applications that enhance the things you can do with videos you upload to your Facebook profile. There are applications that help you share songs and music you like or dedicate a song to a Facebook friend. The list goes on and on.
This has been going on for many months now, but no company had really taken advantage of the platform with a killer viral marketing gimmick… at least, that is, until Burger King came along.
Burger King released their own Facebook Application last week, called Whopper Sacrifice. The application asks people to sacrifice 10 of their Facebook friends in exchange for a free Whopper.
In less than a week, the Application was being used by over 80,000 members who had collectively sacrificed over 233,000 of their Facebook Friends in pursuit of a free Whopper.
Then yesterday, Facebook killed the Whopper Sacrifice application. Killed it dead.
Why? I can only speculate… but I would venture to say it has something to do with Facebook not being familiar with the concept of marketing and free publicity. I mean seriously… why would they kill this thing? I can understand having a knee-jerk reaction to a piece of software that promises to disconnect your users from one another–particularly when the central concept of Facebook is connecting people. But the end result of these sacrificed friends would have been minimal. Most users would likely have gone back and added their friends again after the promotion ended. And the free publicity for your application developer program would have been invaluable.
Sheesh. It’s a head smacker.
On a side note, can we just admit that Burger King has some of the most uniquely creative marketing people working for them. From the subservient chicken, to the flame-broiled cologne, and now this. They are the undisputed leaders in viral marketing thinking. I’m sure Burger King is not even terribly upset with Facebook about all this. As much as they enjoyed their little application, I’m sure the publicity from this news story about it being killed will far outweigh the impact the campaign would have had if Facebook had left it alone.
Facebook, on the other hand, may have just scared off other major brands from getting creative with the application development program. They are likely to fear the same kind of rebuke-from-on-high that Burger King’s got.
Just seems like a colossally stupid move by Facebook to kill the thing.
So what’s the lesson in all this? Maybe it’s that even the best and most original marketing ideas might still meet resistence from backward-thinking people. And if it does… it still might work out in your favor
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Posted by Jeremy Scott | 0 Comments
Viral Marketing Is The Future; Catch The Wave
Here’s a little bit of fun called Fun Facts About Tennessee.
It’s a neat little list of things most of us TN residents don’t know about our fine state. Things like:
Did you know the Great Smoky Mountains National Park in Eastern Tennessee is the most visited park in the U.S.?
But it is soooooo much more than just a fun little fact list. It is, in fact, viral marketing. What is viral marketing?
I am so glad you asked. Viral marketing is creating web content–it may be a website, an article, a video, a podcast, etc.–that is so great… so fun/funny, that people can’t help but spread it for you. They post about it on their blog (as we are here) and they email it to friends. In that way, it becomes like a virus, spreading on its own.
The real benefit from doing this, from a small business perspective, is two-fold.
- The brand recognition and buzz-worthy aspects of a much-talked-about piece of marketing. A good example of this is our guerrilla golf balls.
- The links this generates to one’s website are so valuable in terms of search engine rankings that they almost cannot be measured.
So in our Fun Facts example, here is a local realtor who gets it. He has crafted a catchy, useful piece of content and placed it on his site. Now blogs like ours are linking to it, sharing this neat list with friends and customers. He’ll probably get 50-100 links to his site out of this, just as we linked to him at the top of this post. And that boost he gets in the search engines is going to help him sell more houses… I guarantee it. This kind of quality “linkbait” (site content that is “fishing” for links from other sites) can singlehandedly lift a site in the rankings, even when no on-site optimization is being done.
Those links will cause the search engines to see his site as a valuable one–one that other sites see as an authority. A link to a site is a sign of trust. Get enough signs of trust, and your site starts ranking better. A lot better.
Keystone has dabbled for a while in this kind of content creation and viral marketing consulting. And we’re being asked about it more and more. We’d love to talk to you about it, should you have an interest. It can boost your company’s profile in the search engines–and trust me, search engines are only going to become more important to the success of your website.
Let us know if you have an interest in some of our viral marketing ideas. We like being creative, especially when it can dramatically help your business.
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Google Delves Into the Virtual Environment Market ...
Google thinks that more and more people are using the web to socialize, and they’d like to let you know about a new virtual reality world they’ve created for just that purpose.
It’s called Lively, and it’s basically Google’s answer to Second Life.
What’s that? You don’t know what Second Life is? Well, your kids probably do.
Second Life–and now Lively–is an online environment where people create rooms and buildings to hang out in. You get an avatar–character–to control, and you walk around the virtual room having conversations and such.
A key difference is that Lively, like most Google products, is completely free to use. Second Life requires a membership fee. So many are speculating that Google is out to sink Second Life. I think it’s probably more likely that they just saw room in that virtual environment marketplace and wanted to carve a slice.
It may not seem like much, but Second Life is quite the thriving business–bands have played virtual concerts there, and Fortune 500 businesses have held virtual press conferences in Second Life as well. As businesses embrace new media and new web technologies, the virtual social sites will only grow in popularity.
Anyway, you can read more about Lively here. Or you can go directly to Lively here. Just promise me you won’t let virtual socializing replace, you know, real socializing.
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Guerrilla Search Engine Marketing–Golf Ball ...
Myself and several of my co-workers had the privilege of playing in Monday’s Hendersonville Chamber of Commerce Golf Tournament at the Bluegrass Country Club.
The weather was perfect, the golfers were jovial, and the birdies were flowing–for some teams more than others.
Any of you who participated in the tournament have probably already heard about our guerrilla marketing golf balls. For the rest of you, here’s the Cliff’s Notes version:
See, one of our fastest growing services is Search Engine Optimization–or, helping websites rank better on Google. And we wanted to highlight that service to a tournament field filled with our core demographic… small business owners. So we conceived of and designed some specialty golf balls. They were really nice golf balls, some of the nicest Nike makes. On one side we printed our logo, and on the other side was a catchy marketing message:
“Finding golf balls is easy. Finding your website on Google is hard. We can help. FoundGolfBall.com“
At 8:30, an hour or so before the groups all teed off, Eric and I hopped in one of the spare golf carts and headed out. We drove the whole course, “losing” 7 or 8 of our special guerrilla golf balls on each and every hole. Some were “lost” in the rough. Some were “lost” in the sand traps or near the edges of water hazards. Others were “lost” in the trees and wooded areas. Heck, we even managed to “lose” a few on or near the green on several holes.
The idea was that golfers are always on the lookout for free golf balls. Anytime a golfer hits a ball into the woods and stumbles upon another ball that someone else lost… it makes that bad shot just a little easier to take, because now he got a free golf ball out of the deal.
So we assumed that our Found Golf Balls would be found… often.
Anyone whose interest was piqued went home Monday evening and typed into their Internet Explorer address bar the website URL printed on the ball: FoundGolfBall.com, which took them to this page here on our website.
There they learned that the ball itself was a coupon, good for one free hour of Search Engine consulting with one of our Search experts (a $100 value). We’ve already had a few people email or call to take advantage of that offer.
What’s even more fascinating is the requests we’ve gotten to give estimates on recreating this Found Golf Ball promotion for our clients. Guess we should have seen that coming, as there were plenty of folks talking about it at the tournament’s reception.
So we’ve put together a nice, affordable package for any small business owners who want to make the biggest sponsorship splash of your next corporate golf tournament:
- 2-4 hours consulting time with our concept team. We’ll help you pick the perfect marketing angle and slogan for your guerilla golf balls
- 144 custom printed Nike golf balls
- A free web page to promote a specific service, product, special offer, or just your business in general. We’ll print the FoundGolfBall.com URL and a promo code on the ball, and anyone who visits the site and types in the code will be redirected to your special promotional page. This includes hosting and web design
- A handy PDF guide we authored with special instructions, tips, tricks, and suggestions to help make your golf ball promotion a rousing success
There isn’t a business or industry that these golf balls can’t help promote. Here are some examples:
Churches: “If only peace was as easy to find as this golf ball. Come join us on the journey at First Community Church.”
Golf Instructors: “If you were a better golfer, you probably wouldn’t have found this ball.”
CPAs: “Finding a CPA is like finding this golf ball… easy. Finding a CPA you can trust? Now that’s hard.”
So on and so forth. You see where we’re going here… any business can take this novel approach to marketing and, with the right guidance, come up with the perfect slogan.
Sure, you can sponsor the par-3 17th hole, like you do every year, and sit there giving away bottled water… like you do every year.
OR… you can do something that’s truly unique and totally memorable with the Found Golf Ball promotion from Keystone Business Solutions. Make a lasting impression on the CEOs and decision makers of local businesses in your area, and have some fun with it at the same time.
Give us a shout today to find out what it might take to get the ball rolling on your own amazing golf ball promotion.
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Lost Clues: Who Are The Oceanic 6?
Lost is back, and I’m pretty happy about it. There are several of us in the office who watch, and each week we come into the office stammering and yammering about the latest developments. Even if you don’t watch Lost, there’s no denying it’s a powerful mystery that has millions wondering every week where the next twist or turn will occur.
It’s as good an excuse as any to talk about viral marketing. Viral marketing is any marketing attempt where the fans themselves are the marketers–where the message spreads like a virus. Usually it’s a video or a website that people are just compelled to forward to each other through email. You may have heard about some of the viral marketing efforts for The Dark Knight (which claimed that the Joker had his own website at WhySoSerious.com–a site that has now added a black ribbon memorial for actor Heath Ledger) or Cloverfield (which featured a number of puzzle-related sites such as the Ethan Haas Was Right game).
But no one does it better than Lost. There have been countless online games, books, side mysteries, and other online content that feeds the underlying mystery of the show. Back in the show’s first season, the fictional airline (Oceanic Air) had its own website, where you could click around and fiddle with the book-a-flight interface to unlock other secrets of the story. That site currently has an alert message that All Flights Are Cancelled–in keeping with the mythology of the show.
If you follow Lost, you now know that some of the survivors of flight 815 make it off the island. And there appear to have been six of them total–hence the question “Who are the Oceanic 6?” We don’t know how or why they get off the island, as we’re only getting flash-forward vignettes that give us hints.
We do know that Jack, Kate, and Hurley are three of the six. So the question becomes…”Who are the other 3 of the Oceanic 6?”
We’re competing here in the office with a small pool, where each of us has guesses at which survivors will make it off the island. My money? It’s on Sayid, Sun, and Claire. I think Sayid will make it off the island, simply because he doesn’t trust Locke. The other two I’m picking because one is pregnant, and the other just had a baby. Seems like a new child is as good a reason as any to get off that island.
Just a guess, obviously. And yeah, if you don’t watch the show, you’ve either stopped reading already or I’m beginning to seriously bore you.
The point is this: Lost is the viral marketing champ, and that’s evidenced by fans everywhere (including us here in the office) obsessively drawing up scenarios, discussing mysteries, and following the online clues. The show’s mythology even has its own Wikipedia page, separate from the main Lost entry! Every season of the show sees the produers upping the ante in terms of hype and mystery. And the big viral push this year is “Who are the Oceanic 6?” The billboard pictured above was photographed in Florida the week before this year’s premiere. Think about that… part of Lost’s viral marketing campaign involves real-world, old-school-advertising in the form of a bill board. Because they knew some obsessive fan would take a picture of it and put it online and the furor would begin. Lost has come to point in its life where the episodes themselves are viral marketing efforts, as the producers put so many tiny clues and hints and references in the background that fan-sites have cropped up all over the place to post screenshots and pour over the details looking for clues.
Listen, viral marketing is not just for the big guys anymore. Sure, they own the market…they may have perfected it. But viral marketing is a phrase that sort of first got its name back in the days of the Blair Witch Project, where producers counted on folks who thought the footage of the film was real passing the word of the film to their friends via email. The little guys are the ones who started this whole thing. And “viral marketing” can be as simple as a fun post on your company blog or website that you try and get folks to link to. If you’ve heard of social bookmarking sites like Digg, Reddit, or Mixx, then you should know that these sites are full of content that is essentially linkbait.
”Linkbait” is a form of viral marketing where content with mass appeal is created and then submitted to social networking sites like the ones mentioned above. Stories that make the home page on Digg have been known to receive tens of thousands of site visitors in a day’s time–often crashing the server of the target site. And stories that make the home page also generally lead to a bunch of new links to that site across the web–and links are terribly valuable in terms of search engine placement. Here’s a quote from this excellent summary article on the benefits of linkbait:
While there are many factors that search engines use to determine how they will rank a web page – one of the most powerful elements is how many links point to it. Search Engines treat incoming links to your site like votes – (I’m over simplifying here) the more votes you get the more they’ll see others as valuing your page.
So let me give you an example: You run a football blog. Let’s say you just love football and the NFL and you write about it on your personal website. And maybe your regular, every day content is a summary of the week’s games and predictions for the next week’s match-ups. A good viral campaign for you would maybe be to create a list of some football-related thing….say “The Top 10 Most Amazing Super Bowl Comebacks Ever” (which would be a timely list, no?) and you write a little synopsis for each game. Then, with a little luck, it gets picked up by Digg on the home page and your little football blog gets thousands of hits and a hundred links. Within days you’re ranking #1 on Google for a ton of football-related queries and your once-little blog now has hundreds of subscribers. That’s how linkbait works.
That’s the hope, anyway. Viral marketing is definitely a hit or miss endeavor. There’s no way to know what content will set the web on fire. But that hasn’t stopped companies far and wide from trying.
We have a few clients trying some very clever viral marketing ideas, some smaller than others, some more successful than others. Developing and implementing viral marketing and linkbait campaigns is a bit of a new service for us–heck, it’s new for everybody–but we’re having a blast helping out sites that want to reach a huge audience quickly, or develop a strong group of devoted followers. If you think we might be able to infuse your online marketing efforts with a little extra zing, give us a shout and let’s talk about it.
Or we can just talk about Lost and who you think the other 3 members of the Oceanic 6 might be. Perhaps an even better question to ask would be “Who aren’t the Oceanic 6?” Either way, it’s fun to talk about, isn’t it?
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