I’ve Sneakily Turned This Into An Ad

I’ve always found it interesting the degree to which marketing bloggers and people on Twitter promote the campaigns they’re working on.

I guess I’ve kind of come to expect it simply given the industry they work in. And I’m certain this is not a new concept, only replacing a group email to family and friends to give a campaign a bit of a kick start.

But it does raise some questions about honesty and transparency. Especially when it goes beyond blogs and Twitter and into much more personal networks like Facebook. As a marketer or an advertiser, should I be pumping my work through something like a status update, even more so when it doesn’t look like “work”?

I’ve been thinking about it because over the next few months I’ll be using a lot of my social networks to get people to Vote for Zac and Cookies ‘n’ Cream as the next SupaShake flavour. As you can see I’ve put a banner to your right and I’ll be promoting it quite heavily through Twitter and Facebook until February.

I think it’s a bit different because this is somewhat of a competition not just a campaign I’m running, but still raises some questions. One of them may be, how many of you will get tired of me talking about it over the next few months?

No Comments
  • Lachyw
    Posted at December 16, 2009 7:35pm, 16 December Reply

    As a marketer you're expected to shamelessly and immorally promote yourself and your brand/products in any way you can! j/k

    Are you going to swap your profile pic on fb/twitter to the cookies'n'cream supa shake image? I think you should 😉

    Also remember a post from you a while ago about banner ads… you said something about a "Do Not Subject to Banner Ads register". How's that going?

  • Tannie
    Posted at December 16, 2009 9:49pm, 16 December Reply

    I think this varies on the grounds that your campaign is sort of a half half. Yes you;re involved in the campaign but it also seems to stem from a vote for me so I win style contest in which your incentive is driven by winning.

    It's kind of in the array of Smiths contest for the flavours recently. The people were involved in the campaign but you can bet they were promoting themselves as well.

  • Zac Martin
    Posted at December 16, 2009 11:24pm, 16 December Reply

    @ Lachyw

    Haha, yes I thought of that as I was putting it up there, in fact I think that's what stemmed the idea for this post. As it's personal I'm gonna let it slide..!

  • lyndellnm
    Posted at December 18, 2009 10:38am, 18 December Reply

    Guess it depends. In this case, I'm thinking the SupaShake competition will be taking up most of your thinking, living and breathing time. As it should! So, it's kind of natural that you'll post about it on your personal social networks.

    Also agree with Tannie – part of why you're doing it is to promote yourself to prospective employers. So, again, fair game.

    As a professional marketer though, I don't spend my time on my personal social networks promoting the brand I work for. Boring.

  • josh
    Posted at December 18, 2009 3:08pm, 18 December Reply

    What are you doing apart from putting up banners? do you get to be in tvc's and stuff?

  • Zac Martin
    Posted at December 18, 2009 3:09pm, 18 December Reply

    @ Josh

    A bit happening over the next few months, can't say much until then! But no, my budget doesn't quite cover TV haha.

  • lauren
    Posted at December 19, 2009 12:04am, 19 December Reply

    i shamelessly plug my exhibitions, projects and drawing sales on twitter, facebook, flickr and my own blog! and my friends still speak to me. in fact they're more supportive than ever. ok, so slightly different type of creative 'output', but make of it what you will…

  • Marek
    Posted at December 21, 2009 6:03am, 21 December Reply

    I would also add that the use of a network (personal or not) to promote anything, should be relevant, targeting, interesting and value-adding.

    As someone who has seeded links for work on my networks, the decision to do so was based on whether my friends would care, whether it impacted on my rep etc.

    Not sure that helping decide which flavour of milk drink will win yet another competition is really relevant to your marketing blog.

    Perhaps as part of your communications strategy, you segment your audiences across your networks and deliver targeted and relevant messages.
    I.e.
    On your blog, could take an angle such as 'Do you create consumer promotions for your brands? Want to see what's best practices? Need to test a new user journey through a promotion, etc
    So the reason or motivation to vote, isn't to pick a flavour but to get new or different ideas of how to run a campaign.

    Then on Facebook you would take a personal angle,
    probably segmenting your friends into stuff like school, uni etc and then you could target them with specific messages

  • Zac Martin
    Posted at December 21, 2009 3:11pm, 21 December Reply

    @ Marek

    That's probably a great approach, I guess the question becomes is a chance at winning some money and helping out a friend enough to secure a vote.

    I'm already have a few issues with "spam" appearing in the News Feed on Facebook, so now looking at making an event and inviting people to it.

  • Marek
    Posted at December 21, 2009 7:44pm, 21 December Reply

    @ Zac,

    Why not be a little more fun than just sending out messages.
    Think about the fun and simple facebook campaigns like the one Ikea did to launch their Malmo store (using image tagging) or observe how apps and random lists and pictures get interacted with on FB.

    See that campaign here
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0TYy_3786bo&feature=player_embedded

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