Become a Fan: Facebook marketing

Facebook is smart. And they certainly are not a charity sale. In order to provide the thousands of employees with the great benefits and to keep on growing they’ll annoy their users just enough to make some money, but not enough that they migrate to The Next Big Thing. Facebook advertising is not all that obstructive. Even when ads do show up, they are nicely related to your own interest. How does Facebook know how to target you? Because of all the information you give them voluntarily. Advertisers can target you by location, age, gender, education, workplace, relationship status, relationship interests, languages and of course – keywords (Facebook Advertising). A Miami-based wedding planning company can set their campaign to run only on users‘ accounts who live in Miami or within a certain range of kilometers away from it and who set their relationship status to „engaged“. Facebook can help you out with designing the optimal campaign (Suggested Best Practices for Advertising on Facebook). Facebook even prepared “The Insider’s Guide to Viral Marketing“, a document which describes various viral marketing practices available on the site.

As well-designed as Facebook marketing can be, we all know that we don’t like adverts, even if they match our interest. Facebook has a solution for this too – Fan Pages. These are corporate pages which can be set by official business representatives of a company or an organization.

“Create a Page for My Business” – guidelines.

In this post I would like to research various examples of on-obstructive, opt-in marketing techniques are used by companies on Facebook. Brands can create a great space for their costumers to engage with the product. Solutions are vast: create an application, poll, put your videos (commercials) online, create events, write notes, update your status, create incentives for joining your community. The keyword is “opt-in” – users decide themselves that they want to engage with the brand, as opposed to being bombarded with messages they do not want to receive. Let me illustrate this claim with three examples, showing how brands can take full advantage of  creating a consumer space on Facebook for marketing purposes:

Case Study 1 – Ben&Jerry’s (Fan Page)

Let’s examine how Ben&Jerry’s is utilizing Facebook as a marketing platform.

To celebrate the launch of Ben&Jerry’s Flipped Out ice cream the company partnered with FlipMyText to let you surprise your friends with a flipped out status (which hopefully mentions how amazing Ben&Jerry’s is).

On this note I would like to draw your attention to how many interaction options the company’s Fan Page enables: next to the usual “Wall”, “Info”, “Reviews”, “Discussions”, “Boxes”, “Notes”, “Video” and “Photos” there is also information about the new product (“Flipped Out”), “Events”, “FlipMyText” utility, “Polls” (“How do you like your ice cream?”, “Your favorite Flipped Out flavour?”), “Send Ben&Jerry” and “Causes”.

“Send Ben&Jerry” not only plays on the functionality of sending your Facebook friends gifts but also promotes the variety of flavours.

Result? The producer of delicious ice cream has managed to gather quite a fan base on Facebook: 986,077 people state their support for the company. Many of them are actively engaged with the Page:

When Ben&Jerry announced a temporary name change for its popular Chubby Hubby (to Hubby Hubby) in order to celebrate legalization of gay marriage in Vermont, 3.231 people “liked” the information and a stunning 576 of them left a comment to praise the move. An active community who are engaged with the brand for a prolonged period of time voluntarily and without a material incentive are all a brand can ask for… It takes a great product to create such a bond, but creating a platform for the brand’s supporters to unite is equally important.

Case Study 2 – Burger King „Whooper Sacrifice“ (Application/Fan Page)

What was announced by the press to be one of the most creative advertising campaigns on Facebook (Tech Crunch) was shut down (or rather disabled, as it still exists only its functionality is blocked) just a week before its launch. „Whooper Sacrifice“ was Crispin Porter + Bogusky creative ad agency’s campaign for Burger King. You get rid of 10 friends from your friends list, we give you a free Whooper voucher. 233,906 friends were removed by 82,771 people in less than a week. The reason for the shut down was privacy issues violation:

„ We encourage creativity from developers and brands using Facebook Platform, but we also must ensure that applications follow users’ expectations of privacy. This application facilitated activity that ran counter to user privacy by notifying people when a user removes a friend. We have reached out to the developer with suggested solutions. In the meantime, we are taking the necessary steps to assure the trust users have established on Facebook is maintained.” (1)

What  the Facebook team didn’t like was the generation of a news feed about being deleted from somebody’s friends list. Usually, when somebody is deleted by another user no notification is shown to either the person or the person’s friends. Reactions of the public ranged from shock of how anti-social the application was, to extremely enthusiastic. In the end, what really mattered was the vast media coverage the campaign received, creating a lot of free media buzz. Possibilities offered by Facebook as a marketing platform were used creatively and to a full extend.

By the way, check out the Subservient Chicken campaign.

Case Study 3 – Heyah (Fan Page)

Heyah is a pay-as-you-go brand offered by Polish GSM provider Polska Telefonia Cyfrowa, targeted mainly at young people. It’s Facebook existence in the Pages section has attracted 14,394 fans who are a very active community. The brand is known for its excellent marketing campaigns and takes full advantage of what the Facebook marketing platform has to offer as well.

One of the most successful recent marketing campaigns in Poland was Heyah’s “No To Sru”. The ad used a play on the English word “through” the the Polish common mispronunciation thereof – “sru”. The colloquial word “sru” can be loosely translated as “down with it”. When the cat-student gets annoyed by the dog-teacher he nonchalantly says what can be translated as: “Whatever. Down with it”. He then drops the iron anchor on the dog and the lector mentions all of Heyah’s services which are “down in price”.

Hayah’s Facebook fan has an easy access to all of Heyah’s recent commercials within one click. “No To Sru” has become the most popular animation film on YouTube amongst Polish people. Heyah has even made space for fan videos:

An application has been created which enables the users to create their own scenario of the commercial. One can use various cat and dog figures, text bubbles and props. A funny example of fan art:

Frame 1.

teacher: Three

student: Fri (common Polish pronounciation)

Frame 2.

teacher: ….

student: Not for free (fri)?

Frame 3.

Lector in a calming voice: for free, for free… (Free SMSes within Heyah)

Heyah also makes sure to not only interact with its “fans” but also to promote its products through the Facebook platform:

On the Fan Page one can find a poll (168 likes, 111 comments) and Heyah ringtone (149 likes, 28 comments). The company tries to stay close to the consumer base. One of its status updates reads: “We have 10.000 fans. Thank you!” (111 likes, 36 comments).

Conclusion

Such an intimate way of consumer-brand interaction was not possible in the pre-Web 2.0 world. Companies are smart to realize the potential of the opt-in marketing on social platforms such as Facebook. Maintaining a company’s positive image is an essential part of promotional strategies and Facebook is a very good place to promote oneself. Simply starting a Fan Page might not be enough, however. Ben&Jerry’s, Burger King and Heyah seem to understand that it is important to create extra value for members to join in. Providing them with interaction, additional features and sense of community strongly enhances their online company experience and can strengthen the consumer-brand bonds.

References:

1. Brian Morrissey (2009). BK Offers Facebook ‘Sacrifice’. AdWeek.com:  http://www.adweek.com/aw/content_display/news/digital/e3i9953839003c11ce8bbf5f762069ef9ba

Book review: UBERMORGEN.COM

UBERMORGEN.COM might be always trying to combine some nice entertainment with very intellectual European subversive art, but God Christ, we need to relax sometime and sell Google ad space on eBay and write a book about it and sell that on Amazon and twitter everybody about it and be totally modern, postmodern and lostmodern 1.

The book UBERMORGEN.COM is a two-part art catalogue documenting all of the projects conduced by Hans Bernhard  and lizvlx, founders and main activists of the UBERMORGEN.COM group. Vastly illustrated and providing much informative material, the book is an excellent read. Despite my biggest effort I couldn’t find a book cover picture online, my apologies.

After examining the projects carried out by UBERMORGEN.COM readers should not be at all surprised to find: psychological complexity (bipolar disorder syndrome), videogames of the 80’s, use of recreational/medical drugs and interpretation of the screen as an infinite space amongst Bernhard’s main influences. The art duo seems to be taking their audience on a psychodelic trip into the altered reality of digital present and digital fantasy future, and we’re all in for a ride.

No answers, just questions

You might recognize Hans Bernhard (YouTube channel/blog) as the historic net art pioneer who was involved with the legendary group etoy2. The anti-corporative rhetoric of etoy can be seen reflected in the nature of UBERMORGEN.COM’s projects. They can be described as dystopian, as no redeeming light can be seen on the horizon of their undertakings and most of them have an anarchist feel. Corporative methods and propaganda are systematically adopted and deconstructed, as UBERMORGEN.COM create mostly politically intertwined art. However, they don’t engage in a dialogue, rather simply throwing statements at confused audience („all of UBERMORGEN.COM’s work […] offers no answers, just raises questions“3. I suppose this is what makes them artists, as opposed to political activists.

It’s Absolutely Different Because It’s Fundamentally Different

The most powerful art project ([V]ote-Auction) cost the collective 70.000 Euro in legal fees and a ban to ever enter the territory of the United States. What is especially impressive of UBERMORGEN.COM’s debut work is that it caused enough panic for CNN to broadcast a half hour programme on the project.

You can watch the video here.

Set-up just before the US presidential elections, the website http://www.voteauction.com declared its desire to „bring capitalism and democracy closer“ by enabling American citizens to sell their votes to whoever would like to pay the most. The site further explained: „Voteauction.com […] is now owned by an Austrian holding company that has invested in many of America’s new, emerging industries. We feel that the American Election Industry provides unique new opportunities for the foreign investor. We purchased voteauction.com in order to investigate the profit-making potential of the American Election Industry“4. Media outburst caused UBERMORGEN.COM to answer an average of 30 telephone and 15 email interviews per day.

In reality it was indeed solely an art project and not a business endeavour. All statistical data (e.g. price per vote) was phony and no one could actually buy or sell their votes. The website was designed more as an aesthetic forum for rethinking democracy rather than anything else. UBERMORGEN.COM refused to engage in a political dialogue condemning or protesting against political art or activism.

Asked by CNN reporter Van Sustern about the difference between lobbying politicians and selling votes, William Wood, Chief Counsel of state of California, said „It’s absolutely different because it’s fundamentally different“. UBERMORGEN.COM use this pearl of wisdom as their slogan for [V]ote-Auction.

Perfectly (dys)functional installations

Alessandro Ludovico, a media critic and editor in chief of the highly respected Neural magazine, provides the readers with a very interesting Introduction to the main book of the set. He states that:

„Most of UBERMORGEN.COM’s installations show something plausible, tangible and perfectly (dys)functional, which has apparently been (unlawfully) appropriated from a future that is just around the corner. These objects are not really prototypes, but complex abstractions that seem to have arrived ahead of their time in their social and/or economic setting. UBERMORGEN’s anomaly is here to make a difference in how we perceive „reality“ – now and at least until the day after tomorrow“ 5 (UBERMORGEN meaning tomorrow or the day after tomorrow in German).

This is a very good observation. Projects described in this book are too plentiful to be all discussed in detail but let’s take a look at some of those (dys)functional installations.

Foriginal media hacks

Generator Tetralogy projects were mostly inspired by the legal outburst accompanying the [V]ote-Auction project: domains being shut down, legal fees to be paid and a lot of legal correspondence being sent by email.

All of the four generators create [f]originals (forged originals) – prescriptions (Psych | OS Generator), court orders (IP NIC – Injunction Generator), bank statements (BANKSTATEMENTGENERATOR), and torture protocols (Superenhanced Generator). The term [f]original is used to describe „any document or legal paper that in the narrow sense of the word is not an original any more, as it has been generated by a machine (…) and is „valid without a signature“. (…) [F]originals claim authenticity but on closer inspection they turn out to be the product of „consensual hallucination“) 6. Again, the generators leave the audience with no commentary but we can already deduce what the artists are trying to tell us. They came up with a creative reaction to running into a lot of legal and financial inconveniences during the [V]ote-Auction project. Even though emailed documents aren’t legally considered official UBERMORGEN.COM had to bear the burden of consequences. As a response they created a series of generators capable of forging different types of documents usually issued only by professionals, just as in their opinion emailed documents are forgery.

EKMRZ Trilogy

The trilogy deals with e-commerce and uses the dialectics of Google (GWEI – Google Will Eat Itself), Amazon (Amazon Noir – The Big Book Crime) and eBay (The Sound of eBay). Allegedly admiring and being attracted to those websites, UBERMORGEN.COM (ab)use them in very interesting ways.

GWEI – Google Will Eat Itself project uses the AdSense mechanism. Every time a user clicks on one of the GWEI-networked sites, UBERMORGEN.COM receive money from Google. Then, they use the money to buy shares of Google itself. It is estimated that it will take 202.345.117 years until GWEI fully owns Google.

Amazon Noir – The Big Book Crime uses the „Search Inside the Book“ mechanism to decode the full content of a book. A sophisticated robot-perversion-technology accesses the books using different identities, copies contents of each page and reassembles the book automatically into a single PDF file. Then the book is shared through peer-to-peer networks.

The Sound of eBay generates unique songs by using eBay user data (credit card information, bank details, password, bought and sold items, prices, ratings, comments, etc.). The songs are presented in teletext porn style.

Double trouble

I would most definitely recommend this book to anyone interested in digital media art, especially if the person leans slightly towards anti-consumerism or maybe even anarchism. Plenty more projects are described in the book and due to length constraints weren’t mentioned in this article. I would definitely say that they surely are interesting to read about and can provide substantial amount of entertainment, some possibly only to those with indiscriminate taste. I enjoyed learning about each and every single of the projects.

Just to give you an example of what else can be found in the book:

-       Webpaintings. An Internet site which looks like a website but has no functionality and therefore exists only as a painting. Some examples from the gallery: THE_WHITE_WEBSITE, THE_BLACK_WEBSITE, AnuScan Inc.

-       Chinese Gold. A project about Chinese „Gold Farmers“ – teenagers who are employed in digital sweatshops to play online games such as World of Warcraft. They produce in-game currency, equipment and characters which are later sold by the companies to American and European gamers via eBay.

-       Numerous other projects (e.g. Nazi Line, Wahlgeld.com).

The double feature of the book leaves me a little puzzled. It seems that the main book consists mainly of media material describing each project, while the accompanying book functions as artists‘ commentary on the projects. I find this division slightly confusing. If the reader wants to grasp information about a specific installation, they have to browse through two separate books, chapters of which are not coordinated. Not only are they not coordinated but also the accompanying book doesn’t contain information about all of the projects – just a selection.

Another issue that I found slightly bothersome is the unequal division of attention dedicated to each project. While some chapters contain vast amount of materials, Plasticman – Role Model provides the readers solely with a poem, pictures and information that it is „a collaboration between UBERMORGEN.COM and scandinavian porn producer & photographer Petter Hegre“ 7. I am left with a feeling of inefficiency.

Editing of the book also leaves a great deal to be desired. It should be decided once and for all is names and countries are to be spelled with capital letter (preferably yes, but if small case has to be used I would prefer to see  this pattern equalized throughout the whole book).

Those complaints are only minor in my judgement, as the overall content of the book left me wanting to read it cover-to-cover. A nice bonus for those especially curious can be found at the back of each book – quite a big selection of texts written about UBERMORGEN.COM by various journalists and numerous exhibition pictures (main book).

Footnotes:

1. Domenico Quaranta „It’s lustful entertainment, baby! Interview with UBERMORGEN.COM“, in Digimag, Issue 39, November 2008

2. Piotrowska Hania “Etoy vs. Etoys – Toywars”, in Logo and Image blog, Maastricht University, 14 May 2007

3. Ubermorgen.com “Psych|OS Generator”, in Ubermorgen.com, fpeditions, 2009, p.42

4. Ubermorgen.com “[V]ote-Auction”, in Ubermorgen.com, fpeditions, 2009, p.5

5. Alessandro Ludovico “UBERMORGEN’s anomalous contemporaneity”, in “UM.“, Christoph Merian Verlag, 2009, p.7

6. Ubermorgen.com “Foriginal Media Hacks”, in Ubermorgen.com, fpeditions, 2009, p.27

7. Hans Bernhard&lizvlx “UBERMORGEN’s anomalous contemporaneity”, in “UM.“, Christoph Merian Verlag, 2009, p.64