How 5 Global Brands Are Using Facebook For Campaigns – Video Case Studies

From Simply Zesty:

Big brands from all over the world are using Facebook on a daily basis to engage with consumers and although most will have a long term strategy they will also run tactical campaigns to acquire likes and encourage interaction. These 5 video case studies show how the brands and agencies went about creating the campaigns and how they reached out in to multiple platforms. You might not have the big budget that these global brands have but you can certainly take some inspiration from what they are doing and add it in to your own smaller campaign…

Budweiser

With the launch of the hockey season Budweiser wanted to tap in to one of the most popular sports in Canada and did so by creating an interactive game featuring a goal keeper. This is more of an agency case study highlighting their work but it does give a great insight in to the amount of time and effort a large brand will put in to one simple game on Facebook.




Subway

Subway might make some of the most disgusting sandwiches in the world (my personal opinion only) but they have shown over the years just how good they are at marketing. This campaign video shows just how much focus they put in to getting that community feeling going.




Renault

As one of the largest car manufacturers in the world Renault have been making some big strides in to the world of Facebook and this campaign shows how they asked fans to engage with them in the real world at a car exhibition in Holland with the information pushed back in the online world on Facebook.





Six Flags

One of the biggest theme park operators in the world were losing the youth market and wanted to engage with 16-24 year olds and they decided to create an interactive game with deep Facebook integration. The smart thing about this campaign is it got over 80,000 people voting and watching the rides in the online world which did of course raise awareness and the amount of people turning up in the real world.




Altoids

The Altoids campaign was slightly different because they used Youtube to create a song about Facebook that included references to their brand and got over 2.5 million views. The video was only a small part of the campaign though as the main activity was over on the Facebook page where users could vote for their friends in different Facebook awards. You can see a full case study here.

Trouble For Recruitment Industry As Linkedin Launches “Apply With Linkedin” Button

From Simply Zesty:

Linkedin today revealed a new feature that if it takes off could revolutionize the entire recruitment industry and become a massive cash cow for Linkedin themselves. At first glance “Apply with Linkedin” seems like a simple enough proposition and just another small feature launch but when you think about it a little more this is so much more than any other button on your website. Candidates will be able to apply directly for jobs on organization’s websites and the companies using this can customize the look and feel of the button to match their own branding. If I was working in the recruitment industry or ran any sort of job boards I would be very worried about the launch of this particular feature from Linkedin and it could just be one of the defining moments for Linkedin themselves as they seek to gain more presence on the web and not just within their own site.

How Does This Work?

The key to this is just how easy it is for both companies and applicants to use. As a company you can customize your button and application process to match with your branding and as an applicant you can tailor you CV before you actually submit it.

Who Will This Affect

If companies all over the world start embracing this technology (you would imagine they would) then it really could change the entire recruitment industry. Crucially if companies start using it in great numbers then job seeks will start using Linkedin more and filling out their profiles and keeping them up to date. By having the ability to add a simple button to your website you could eliminate the need to post positions on jobs boards or other 3rd party sites. As a candidate if you spend a lot of time improving your network and building your profile on Linkedin you now have a direct way to leverage all that hard work and apply for jobs with one click of a button. Could this even completely eliminate the traditional CV and make Linkedin your default online CV?

How Much Does This Cost?

Amazingly this is free. For anybody in the recruitment industry that has to be a major worry. It’s not clear if this will be free forever but for now Linkedin will just see this as a way of recruiting more candidates to their network and increasing their connections with big companies who will come to rely on them. You can imagine that in the future as this grows and becomes more mainstream that Linkedin will offer more pro versions of this and turn it in to a massive cash cow.

Groupon Changes Privacy Policy, Starts Tracking User Location

From ReadWriteWeb:


Daily deals service Groupon made updates to its terms of service and privacy statement last weekend to reflect new ways the company collects and shares user data.

The biggest change that Groupon made to its privacy statement was in how it tracks and uses the mobile location data it collects when consumers are using Groupon Now, a function that brings timely deals to users based on the time of day and their location. If users opt to share through the Groupon app, the company will track user location and be able to share it with several sources. Groupon also changed its definition of "personal information" to include habits and interests and how it shares that personal information with partners and merchants. Essentially, Groupon is collecting more information from its users from a variety of sources and sharing it with more outlets. What does Groupon's aggressive use of customer data mean for the daily deals company and the marketing industry as a whole.

Fundamentally, Groupon is an Advertiser

One way to think of Groupon is that it is the biggest thing to happen to advertising since Google. In a recent conversation with Chris Tolles, CEO of local news aggregator Topix, he told me that "Groupon is the first truly American form of advertising ... the ability to buy marketing opportunities on credit."

To understand what Tolles means by that, you need to know the fundamental way that Groupon contracts with the merchants it uses for daily deals. Rocky Agrawal wrote a great series on Groupon's business model for TechCrunch and gives a synopsis of how merchants get cash up front from Groupon and then money in intervals thereafter. Agrawal describes Groupon as a "loan shark" and he may not that far from the truth.

Yet, Groupon is a loan shark that is also fundamentally a marketing firm. Merchants turn to Groupon for brand awareness or a quick bump in revenue, just like they would turn to advertising or traditional marketing channels for the same results.

What do advertisers crave the most? Data. As granular as possible. The more Groupon knows about its users the more it can share that information with its partners (and thus acquire more lucrative partners). So, for example, geo-location information taken from users of mobile phones can be shared with partners like travel site Expedia. In the case of Groupon Now, the company can help merchants by showing them how many potential customers are in a given area.

Privacy Concerns and New Era of Advertising

Groupon is controversial. Many merchants that have tried it do not like it and swear against it. What privacy experts and regulators should note is that Groupon is a new type of player in an old game. Groupon is not concerned or influenced by the American Association of Advertising Agencies (the "4A's"), a political action committee of advertisers that often acts as a self-regulatory wing of the ad industry.

Groupon and other daily deals services are in the same market as traditional advertisers - third-party customer acquisition for businesses and merchants. It is a matter of time before the Federal Trade Commission starts taking a closer look at how Groupon or Living Social interacts with the consumer environment and what kind of data it uses for "customer acquisition," whether for itself (through search or email marketing), its partners or the merchants providing the daily deals.