Social networks are all about relationship building. Yet marketers are continuing to use mainstream advertising ploys - including hammering home messages - in targeting the medium rather than just having conversations.
"Frequency of message is not the idea here," Rick Murray, president of Edelman digital, told Advertising Age. "Frequency of contact is."
Charlene Li, VP and principal analyst at Forrester Research, agreed that marketers haven't seemed to figure out that this is a channel where consumers actually want to be spoken to.
"[Consumers] are asking questions on these sites that go unanswered," she said. "You can't ask for a better environment. And what do marketers do? They say nothing and put up another ad."
A successful example cited in the Advertising Age article was Disney's dance-themed film, "Step Up 2 the Streets," which has sold $53 million in ticket sales in the past four weeks. Disney continually revitalized the MySpace profile it created for the original 2006 movie "Step Up" to help drive the movie's DVD sales but wound up expanding the movie's already sizeable and enthusiastic group of fans for the sequel.
An in-theater Nielsen NRG survey conducted during the sequel's opening weekend concluded that "Step Up 2 the Streets" was noticed more than its predecessor because of its MySpace profile. Of the respondents, 49 percent saw an ad or information for the movie on MySpace, compared with 37 percent who saw information on its profile for the original movie. About 58 percent of those with a MySpace profile recalled seeing an ad or information for the sequel, while only 26 percent of those without a profile remembered seeing anything about the movie.
Jack Pan, vice president of marketing strategy and special projects for Disney, told Advertising Age social networks allow marketers to get the most out of already established marketing properties. He particularly raved about MySpace's ability to build brand ambassadors. "The community part is big for us, because creating a forum for discussion and allowing a group to collectively share their interests with each other is like having a digital street team," Mr. Pan said. "By giving these ambassadors content to play with and opportunities to be invested in, we feel like we're providing value to them, and their enthusiasm can do a lot of marketing on our behalf. You see a much more lasting and viral impact than you would through other forms of media."
Discussion Questions: What's the difference between mainstream marketing techniques and efforts targeting MySpace and other social networking sites? How should mainstream advertising be tweaked to work on social networking sites?