The Worst Marketing on Facebook I’ve Seen

May 4, 2011 By 27 Comments

Imgres

I went to update a client’s Facebook Page earlier today and there, smack bang in the middle of the Wall, was something that made me jaw drop. A spammy advert from one of the client’s competitors!

They had Liked the page and then gone in and posted a call-to-action with a link right there on the Wall. It was basically a “hey, check us out too” kind of post.

This is the first time I’ve seen this kind of thing on a Facebook Page we’re running, although no doubt it happens all the time. It frankly left me cold.

How incredibly naive. They might as well have put out a press release declaring “We’re running scared and pretty desperate”.

My suspicions were confirmed when I discovered that the “friend’s” own Facebook Page had one eighth of the Likes my client had.

Nuff said.

The obvious takeaway as far as I’m concerned is that if you’re a newbie, desperate business trying hard to build your name online and considering this kind of approach: DON’T.

I promptly binned the comment and banned the user. Forever!!!

PS. I think it’s great if people join the discussion or ask questions out of the blue. We’re here to be social, after all. But this kind of stunt is only destined to backfire.

Filed Under: advertising, social media

Newspaper Adverts Are So Dead!

January 27, 2011 By 3 Comments

Last night a school we work for held their second Open House; an event which is specifically aimed at recruiting next year’s student intake.

We’ve seen in the past that these events are an essential part of recruitment and go a long way to help the 16 year olds make up their mind about whether the school is for them.

Would you pay to be in one?


In the run up to the event we put our energy and marketing efforts into a:

  • blog
  • Facebook page
  • podcast
  • email newsletter

    • and Twitter.

In addition we also spoke at 3 local schools and placed one advert in Metro, the daily free newspaper that is distributed in Stockholm.

Now I’m not going to breakdown the costs of hiring an agency to build a blog, Facebook and Twitter presence over two years; however, I’m interested in what I discovered last night about newspaper adverts.

The advert in Metro should have cost 34,000 kronor (USD 5000) but we actually managed to get the price knocked down considerably.

Then, as the audience began to build up in the school auditorium I went around asking as many people I could where they had found out about the date for Open House.

“How did you know it was Open House tonight?” I asked everyone.

The overriding response was: “The internet.”

When I pushed them to tell me the site, the majority told me they’d visited the school’s homepage because they knew the name of the school (from friends, family, etc), had found it on Google or surfed in via one of the Swedish education portals (1-2 percent, maybe). That’s how they knew open house was at 18:00 last night.
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Filed Under: advertising

Ketchup on Everything !

January 20, 2011 By Leave a Comment

There are adverts for Sweden’s Felix Ketchup all over Stockholm’s subway stations right now. You only have to glance up to spot pictures of pancakes or ice cream covered with the stuff. The slogan reads Ketchup till allt (literally, ketchup on everything!).

Underneath each poster is a (relatively complex) url to a video on YouTube. The idea being that you might use your smartphone to check out the video.

I think it’s more likely that people would just Google “ketchup till allt”, but you get the point.

The video claims it’s a response to a Facebook Page entitled Jag äter ketchup till allt utom pannkaka I eat Ketchup with everything except pancakes

Peanuts aren’t Always for Monkeys

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Filed Under: advertising, communication strategy Tagged With: , , , ,

Bootstrap Marketing With Social Media

December 21, 2010 By Leave a Comment

If you haven’t considered bootstrap marketing yet with social media, you should. Especially if your marketing budget isn’t quite what you’d like.

Why? Because with social media it can be possible to achieve your goals with limited resources; but to do so you first and foremost need to understand your market. You need to know who they are and what makes them tick. If you don’t believe me just ask a bunch of 18-19 year old Swedish students I’ve been working with.

The Back Story

As I’ve mentioned before I’ve taught a marketing and communications course this fall. One of the assignments I set them was to market their school to 9th graders in the Stockholm region.

Before they started I talked to them about:

  • social media
  • networking
  • promotion
  • creating cool content for marketing purposes
  • key value propositions

and working with brand personas.

Most of all I stressed that they needed to understand their target audience. That, to my mind, is the golden rule of marketing and communications.

The proof of bootstrap marketing is in the pudding

In the last three weeks I’ve posted three videos that the students created using a pretty inexpensive video camera. Each has been posted and promoted on Twitter, Facebook and the school blog. Whilst Jontus Media has helped get the word out on these channels, the students themselves were 100 percent responsible for the content creation.

Now this content has gone head-to-head with the rest of the schools in the Stockholm region trying to interest 9th graders in their ware. Many have hired companies to produce glossy, professional promo videos showing life at the school. Gymnasiekanalen are the most well known company when it comes to school videos used for marketing to 9th graders at present. If you check out their YouTube page you’ll see that the majority of their school videos (branded with their own logo “Skolkanalen”!) get something like 350 views. A couple have a few more. Many have less.
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Filed Under: advertising, marketing, youtube

How Far Can You Take Facebook Like?

November 26, 2010 By 3 Comments

I‘ve spent the entire day at Gymnasiemässan in Stockholm, helping one of our biggest clients promote their senior high school at a recruitment fair, overseeing their stand and marketing material we’ve put together.

I’ve got a lot to say about the Fair but as it’s nearly midnight and I have to be up super early to be there again tomorrow I’ll keep this short.

Irony of Theft?

Whilst talking to some prospective students I noticed that one of them was wearing a badge that said: Bromma Gymnasium – Gilla.

Before the word “Gilla [Like]” was the Facebook hand – or as about as close to it as the designer could get.

In other words, here was a school distributing a big (blue) badge with its name alongside the Facebook Like logo (albeit in Swedish).

Of course it’s interesting that they’re trying to bring on and offline culture together, but reappropriating a logo / phrase like that seems dubious if not downright illegal. Or am I being old-fashioned?

What’s your take?

Update:
Alex did some checking for me today and it turned out a PR agency made the badges for the school’s marketing campaign. Given that they’ve simply taken the Like-icon and used it directly I figure it’s an infringement of the copyright. After all, there’s no actual link love back to Facebook on a badge.

Filed Under: advertising