Many male Facebook users have been wondering over the pass week why so many females on Facebook have been posting seemingly provocative status updates. Status updates have included “I like it on my desk at work”, “I like it @ the front door” and “I like it on the bathroom floor”.
Unfortunately lads this is not want you think but in fact is a cleaver use of viral marketing across the world’s largest social network, Facebook. The “I like it on” status, as The Washington Post’s Melissa Bell explains is “women…posting where they like to keep their purses when they come home, but they conveniently leave out the word ‘purse’.”
October is breast cancer awareness month and in order to increase awareness amongst women and men this viral marketing campaign was launched. The campaign attempts to unite women around the breast cancer cause in a top secret way by keeping men guessing.
Has the campaign to date been successful? Judging by the number of Facebook posts with this status and a number of related articles online explaining what the status means (including this website), it appears this campaign has found strong traction through social networking. Further highlighting the success of this campaign to date, is as of 6 October 2010 at 9pm, the ‘i like it on the floor facebook status’ was the fifth most popular search term on Google. The topic of ‘awareness’ has also trended globally on Twitter.
Social networking has certainly taken off in the last 18 months to 2 years and viral marketers are aware of the benefits to their clients by tapping into these massive online communities. Facebook commands over 500 million active users, with an average user having 130 friends and people spending over 700 billion minutes per month on Facebook. Twitter meanwhile has grown to more than 160 million users (including @frostglobal) from only two years ago when the social networking site had 3 million users worldwide. The other social networking mecca, YouTube has 2 billion videos viewed a day and every minute has 24 hours of video uploaded to its site.
The era of viral marketing is upon us. Whilst there will always be misses with viral marketing campaigns, when a campaign hits it hits hard. The best example to date was Nike’s ‘Write the Future’ ad in the lead up to this year’s FIFA World Cup. The ad launched on YouTube and was a viral marketing success. To date there have been over 21 million views of the video. Nike were successfully able to promote their brand online and gain the majority of press coverage even though they were not an official FIFA World Cup sponsor (the official sponsor was Adidas).
Whether the “I like it on” Facebook status succeeds in raising the global awareness of breast cancer prevention remains to be seen. However what can be gleaned is that viral marketing on social networks is an attractive medium for advertisers and campaigners alike away from traditional media such as TV, Radio and Print.
Do you think the “I like it” campaign is a success?
The Nike ‘Write the Future’ ad