aTypical Joe: a gay New Yorker living in the rural South

Tuesday, October 17, 2006

Commercial culture

The future of advertising, attraction then promotion:

In some ways, marketers on these sites are treated just like any other member. On MySpace they can have a profile page and a group of friends. Facebook allows marketers to use a feature that lets any member create a group that other members can join.

Advertisers can add features to their MySpace profiles and Facebook group pages like video clips, quizzes, downloadable goodies like ring tones, and, of course, links to their own Web sites.

These approaches run the risk of generating a sour reaction from the online community if site members feel marketers are going too far in trying to fit in.

The risk is not advertising, it’s bad advertising. Young people have always embraced ad campaigns that speak to them. In fact, we all like advertising; we want advertising; we even need advertising. We don’t know it because we’ve been overwhelmed with ad clutter, ads that assault and interrupt us and irrelevant ads. Advertising can’t get away with that anymore and so must learn another way.

Unilever, for example, has turned its Axe deodorant into the No. 1 brand in less than four years by promising to help men attract more women. This spring it created a promotion around a group it called Gamekillers - people who get in the way of a seduction, like a guy with a British accent who gets all the attention. The pitch is that Axe helps men stay cool in the face of the Gamekillers.

The campaign included an hourlong program on MTV and a page on MySpace devoted to the topic, with message boards where people could trade complaints and tips about Gamekillers. Its online host was Christine Dolce, a busty model who was already a celebrity thanks to MySpace, where she has accumulated more than a million friends. [...]

As they start to build up advertising sales operations, the social networking sites are starting to develop offerings that let marketers take advantage of some of their features.

For example, Chase has a promotion on Facebook that implicitly uses a person’s friends to endorse its credit cards. When people join the Chase “+1” group on Facebook, they see a list of their other friends who have joined the group. The program gives members points when they do things like apply for a card and get others to sign up. Those points can be redeemed for prizes, donated to charity or given to other friends on Facebook.