Social Campaigns.

It’s been said that in the rapidly approaching future, the social web will essentially be the web. After all, if you want to find people on the internet, odds are they’re already on facebook – and facebook now actually drives more traffic to sites like yahoo and msn than google does.

In the past we’ve talked about what it takes to create a successful facebook fan page. But there are other ways to take advantage of social behavior and its inherent advertising opportunities.

Today’s link shows how Miami agency Crispin Porter Bogusky has taken a key facebook characteristic and used it as the pillar in a campaign for Coke Zero.

Their simple idea is built around the fact that most people on facebook have uploaded photos showing their faces. The premise: just as Coke Zero has the same taste as Coke, perhaps someone out there has the same face as you do (and wouldn’t it be cool to make contact with them). You can find your double via a special Coke Zero portal.

This isn’t the first time Crispin has taken advantage of an existing facebook feature. You might remember, for instance, their idea for Burger King where if you un-friended 10 friends, you got a free whopper.

But the really interesting thing here is that their idea is not based simply around a facebook feature, but around an aspect of social behavior in general. Because whether we’re talking about facebook, or whatever social media engine will come after it, the point is that there’s always going to be something out there that helps people share and connect – and lots of people are going to use it to do just that. The question for us is: how do we make our clients relevant to that activity?

So be a social media user and explorer. It may just help you come up with the next great – and potentially really popular – idea.

Better branding through hashtags.

Facebook is often the first tool we think of when people say “social media.” But we shouldn’t forget its quick and nimble nephew – Twitter.

For those who don’t know Twitter, think of it as blogging lite. You broadcast messages (‘tweet’) to other users who choose to follow you. Similarly, you can choose to follow other Twitter users whose comments interest you. But there’s a catch – you only have 140 characters in which to craft your thoughts, brilliant or not. Twitter also lets you re-broadcast someone else’s message, or send a direct message back to them. Many people use Twitter as a way to share links to web sites, articles etc.

You’ve probably already heard that Twitter helped elect a President (and it wasn’t Taft). You may be surprised to learn that several major companies (including Starbucks, Ford and Best Buy) maintain a constant Twitter presence, broadcasting special promotions and news and even directly messaging consumers. Why? Several reasons: tweets sent out by a real person (even if it’s, say, Ford’s PR guy) help humanize the brand. And Twitter’s share-able and bite-sized nature makes it very easy for consumers to engage with a brand they like. (See their tweets here: Ford, Starbucks, Best Buy)

But wait – there’s more. Much more. Twitter offers us even greater communications potential thanks to the ability to create a ‘hashtag’ topic.

To ‘hashtag’ simply means to append a word with a # (for example, #haiti) that you would then place at the start of your tweet. When you do this, the hashtag signals to Twitter that your tweet is part of a current and popular topic. Twitter can then take all tweets, from every user, with the same hashtag and stream them together, making them easier for everyone to find and creating an impromptu community.

To see how much involvement this can generate, simply go to the twitter home page and type #haiti or #ipad into the search field, and see what comes up (Don’t worry, you don’t have to sign in).

By hashtagging your tweet, you have the potential to ensure a much larger number of people see it. And if your topic represents a powerful enough idea, you have the opportunity to create a social movement as other Twitter users apply the same hash tag to their tweets on the same topic.

Could we create such a movement for Benylin, by inviting people to share their sick day stories with #BenylinDay as the hashtag? Unite Kraft Dinner lovers with #GottaBeKD? Encourage the sharing of positive messages about Sick Kids Hospital with #SickKidsStories?

Obviously, there’s the matter of letting people know about the hashtag you create (Land Rover actually paid people to use the #LRNY hashtag when they tweeted about the company’s New York auto show debut). And, as with any campaign, hashtags would represent just one part of the initiative. But they can be a very powerful part, as long as there’s a powerful idea behind them.

Bonus Links:
40 of the more successful Twitter brands (and why).

And let’s not forget how many celebrities tweet to their fans. Follow everyone’s favourite B list actress, Alyssa Milano, on Twitter.

Social Media: Facebook.

We’ve all heard how important this social media thing is to advertisers these days. And it’s not hard to see why.

Take facebook, for example. Every brand’s target audience is already there. Setting up a facebook page is relatively low cost (the cost comes in the form of time required to keep your page current) and the participatory nature of facebook means fans themselves help spread the word, which is free advertising. And as we all know, engaged consumers make the best customers – and facebook pages help generate more of such customers.

Still, you might well ask: why would anyone become a fan of some big company’s facebook page? Here are three of our competitors who have the answer.

Red Bull (over 2 million fans)
Red Bull uses their facebook page to, among other things, offer a pile of fun content that gives fans a reason to come back and play. Their drunkish dials (see their Boxes section) is a popular feature, and bang on to what their consumer likes about the brand.

Starbucks (over 5 million fans)
Starbucks uses the status update section of their facebook page to impart information and links to helpful articles, reviews, videos etc. Thus fans have an ongoing reason to return and stay involved with the company.

Coca Cola (over 5 million fans)
Sure, it’s loaded with content that keeps fans engaged with the brand. But the best part about this page? Coke didn’t create it. Two average guys did. The page became so popular that Coke found out about it and partnered with the two guys to make the page even better. The two guys still run it and even made a video that tells the story (it’s on the facebook page).

Incidentally, here at JWT Toronto we also have a facebook fan page success story. Our own Show Your Colours campaign effort for Smarties included a facebook fan page, as a vehicle through which people could express support for the overall campaign. In the space of one month the page grew by 80,000 fans.

Which only proves that facebook pages, like everything else we do, work best when they are driven by an idea that’s relevant to the consumer.

PS: If you’re interested in learning more about successful company facebook pages, here’s where I got the information for this week’s link.