Thursday, January 8, 2009

Who wants to be friends with Palmolive?

There have been a lot of conversations recently about the relevance of brands connecting to customers online. Some are saying "Who really wants to be "friends" with Proctor and Gamble on facebook?" and "What good does a viral video do when it potentially deceives the consumer?" On the otherside, we have a wave of other marketers, twitter fans and bloggers who encourage the brands they interact with to use the social tools available. Regardless of what side of the debate you're on, Peter Kim has made your life a bit easier. You can easily scan through the best (and worst) branded social media examples on his Wiki of Social Media Marketing Examples. It started out from a master list he was researching to analyize the relevance of social media. In just a few months the list has over 218 crowd-sourced entries - all of brands who are using the social media space to connect or promote to consumers. Some of my favorite examples:
  • Ikea's Online Community - not for the community, but for the attempt to help thousands of people connect to assist each other in assembling furniture.
  • Rubbermaids Flickr account - is it just me or is this a bit of a stretch. Apparently those who love Rubbermaid, really love it.
  • Popeyes Chicken - on twitter. I can actually see that working. A brand in front of the consumer at a possible point of relevance/pain.
  • This isn't on their but Sony just launched a relevant blog - just in time for CES 2009. This is scalable and has legs.
  • One more nod to Verizon. It may not be the best company for customer service, but someone had their friendly hat on when they launched their Policy Blog. Unfortunately, we usually see this from companies as a tactic to lower the costs of customer complaints...
The results of viewing a list like this really exemplifies the infancy of this marketing tactic and how little is known about the triggers that will connect a brand to a consumer.

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