Watching some businesses and brands grapple with social media reminds me of that classic expression, “putting lipstick on a pig”.
I stumbled across this Marketing Week article a few months ago called, “Reckitt Benckiser makes an online push to connect with young consumers.” As part of a social media campaign backed by online advertising, the cleaning products company launched a Facebook fan page to reach “the online chattering classes” and “be automatically seen to be in the top three global FMCGs”.
One of the best parts of the article was the sole comment it attracted:
“A fan page on Facebook? You’d have to be very sad to join that. I’ll be surprised if it connects with young people. Will they really manage to get a 20 year old student (or worker) interested in connecting with Vanish?”.
Many businesses treat social media tools the same dropping an FSI or placing a grocery cart ad. It becomes just more superficial window dressing. I think it would be far better to apply that investment toward actually making the brand and products more interesting and remarkable.
I touched on this theme last year with Poser Marketing too.