CNN and Social Media

For a Whopper?

"You've been sacrificed for a whopper."

How would you like to read a similar message to that from a 'used-to-be' friend on Facebook? Thousands of people did.

Last week Burger King launched an application on Facebook that allowed you to get a free Whopper if you deleted 10 of your friends. And contrary to how Facebook usually works, people would receive "deletion notices" complete with why they were being deleted.

It seems that Burger King didn't mean harm to anyone's actual friends. When looking at what their application said, they actually encouraged you to become friends with a stranger just so you could delete them. They even had a sample message for you to use when requesting a friend that read:

"Sup fool. I would like to create a false pretense of a a misrepresented friendship, in order to take advantage of it, along with Burger King, to reap rewards for myself, and enjoy a delicious burger, all with the comfort of never feeling guilty for sacrificing a friend that I actually care for."

They also had an actual website that you could visit, Whopper Sacrifice. From that site you could send an "angry-gram" to someone who deleted you. They were just trying to have fun and joke around with this new marketing concept.

So what was Facebook's problem then? Some people were probably deleting "real" friends without letting them know what was going on. And with all the notifications of deletion, Facebook didn't seem to be enjoying it.

Burger King is known for their edgy advertising and marketing ideas. They get the public's attention by pushing the envelope, and it definitely worked this time. Everyone is talking about this app. But Facebook did have them disable it Thursday because they claimed it was in violation of their privacy policy. Facebook does encourage creativity with their applications, but the deletion notifications might have been "too creative" for them.

Ultimately, the Whopper Sacrifice, was "sacrificed", as they put it. It went along well with the rest of their campaign and had a large impact, but it didn't survive as long as they were hoping.

Burger King used Social Media to their advantage. They came up with a very intriguing idea and put it into action. Social Media is usually used as a relational tool, but they were able to turn it around and make people "un-relational" just for a free whopper.

~Connie Jo

Social Media & Advertising

Social Media sites are almost always free, so they must fine other ways to fund their sites. What does that look like and what do people think about it?

Thanks for watching!
~Connie Jo

Let's Go Pre-Shopping!

As we've been moving deeper into this age of the Internet, we've relied more and more on it to get the information we need and want about so many things. Besides using it to connect with others, we research, comparison shop, give reviews so other people can read them, and browse just to gain knowledge of the new items available. In a word, we "pre-shop".

Pre-shopping is so much a part of today's society, especially with generations X and Y. It's only a matter of a few keystrokes and a couple clicks to find information about whatever product you're interested in. This information can come from a companies website, and in may cases from other people's blogs.

Any company* should take advantage of this and jump into the world of social media. If not to give useful information about their products, then at least to see what other people are saying about them. People certainly love to help others and show off their knowledge whenever they can. So by finding what they're saying you can learn how others perceive your company.

Back in 2002, the Roomba self-vacuuming machine from iRobot was first released. Since then, other models and updates have been released. Customers have continued to be fascinated with them. One customer even enjoyed his so much that he posted this video with seven reasons to get one:

Here is an example of a customer who recently Tweeted about her Roomba:

It can be a bit cheesy and humorous, but it's valid. When a customer loves their device that much, they'll let others know. And the next time someone is interested in purchasing a Roomba, they may see this video and be that much more convinced that they should get one.

As you could probably guess, the easiest products to find an abundance of information on are other technologies. A few examples are the Roomba, cameras, computers, spy watches, mp3 players, cell phones, etc. There is so much social media, mostly in blog format, that contributes to pre-shopping. A couple examples are ubergizmo.com and laptoping.com. Go to these and many other sites and you'll find plenty of information about a lot of products. And techfresh.net has tons of categories for you to look through, letting you know about all the most recent innovative technology devices.

As I've said before, today's consumers are online. They are blogging, using Facebook ,Twitter, and MySpace, writing in forums, and getting all kinds of information from each other. These formats you can't control. But companies who help their customers "pre-shop" will probably have an advantage over others, as long as the information is honest and true.

Get your customers the information they want online, and it could save your employees time from having to answer numerous questions. It's where they are, and where you should be helping them.

~Connie Jo

*Not all companies can do this online, but most of those who sell products directly to their customers can.