How to get people talking about your brand

It’s called social engagement marketing or relationship marketing. If well executed it can be really powerful and get you heaps of free coverage in the sort of publications and online sites that money can’t buy. A word of caution, though: such campaigns must be thoroughly researched and planned strategically to avoid pitfalls. There are a few blue-chips around to tell a sorry tale.

The idea is to develop a fun, social campaign for people to engage with your product or brand. The more engaging the idea, the more viral marketing will occur – people sharing it with friends and others via forums, Facebook, Twitter, and through blogs. Smart execution of the campaign can also result in invaluable PR in hip magazines, ‘Top 10” lists … your brand will be on everybody’s lips.

Here’s two recent campaigns, both highly successful, that show how powerful this form of marketing can be.

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The lost & found FREE hotel room

Lost and Found is Tourism Victoria’s hip publication promoting all things fabulous about Melbourne. Now the Lost and Found Hotel is giving people the chance to stay FREE for up to three nights in a swanky room full of locally-designed furniture, homewares and cosmetics. It’s such a cool idea that the blogosphere and high-end mags like Monument are promoting it!

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Hidden Pizza - find it and score FREE pizza!

What looked like a new restaurant giving away freebies for it’s first couple of weeks was actually an ingenious idea by the relationship marketing specialists Clemenger Proximity, in collaboration with ad agency OMD and their client Sensis (Yellow Pages), to show why this form of marketing is so important in a digital, socially-networked age. With just a Facebook page, some tempting tweets on Twitter (“OMG have you seen this?”) and a website, BUT NO ADDRESS OR PHONE NUMBER, the pizza guys were serving 500 pizzas a night. How? People caught the wave of interest, loved the gimmick that the pizzas were free provided you could actually find the restaurant, let their fingers do the walking and – free pizza!

And for Yellow Pages? Invaluable PR coverage. Check out the case study here

Photo above: Angela Wylie www.theage.com.au