Here come the brand social marketing bribes

In the aftermath of the P&G Digital Hack Night, I questioned whether we were witnessing the beginning of an icky trend. What bothered me was the use of charity to get people to market for a brand. Marketers will do whatever they have to do to get into the stream. Charities are a great cover to get people to do their marketing for them.

Sure enough, I came across a Tweet today that looked quite automated: "I just helped donate a FREE box of KRAFT Macaroni and Cheese to Feeding America at www.sharealittlecomfort.com" Sure enough, Kraft is making people an irresistible offer. They'll make a donation to charity if you'll send out a message to as a Twitter or Facebook update. This isn't the first time Kraft has dabbled in this kind of promotion. It linked up with SocialVibe to do a Facebook campaign that used a similar approach: get friends to install a Kraft app and the brand would make a donation to charity. Kraft hopes to get its message broadcast out 1 million times through this program. What's important is it will be broadcast out in personal networks.

On the face of it, this benefits all parties. Charities get help, people get to feel good about themselves for doing nothing more than clicking a button, and brands get to piggyback themselve into the stream. The problem is these kind of programs threated to pollute the stream. What happens when we're all just marketing to each other, blasting out updates for brands, whether there's a cause attached or not? Luckily, as Karl Long says, you get the network you deserve. I'll let a few instances of this pass, but the unfollow and unfriend button will be put into use once this takes off.

Comments

[Max Kalehoff]

There's a demeaning taint to the screen shot you embedded above. All the people and their avatars have a somewhat robotic, mass-marketing quality. Is it me, or do you see it, too? To clarify, it doesn't make Kraft look good. Spam sacred space with copy-and-paste mass-marketing messaging, or endure guilt. Not a winning strategy.

[mcluhead]

"Bribe" is a strong word. If a marketer is going to partake in cause marketing then they need to do it in an authentic, human way. The strategy can work but it's easy to screw up.

[concaf]

Facebook is a great analogy. Over there I'm in a constant war of hiding/ignoring apps and brands and people who clutter my feed. It was only a matter of time before it came to twitter. I feel like it only gets worse from here on out.

[Stephanie Gerson]

as may go without saying, this will work until it stops working. in other words, brands will be able to wage social marketing bribes until people wise up to them and stop acquiescing, or don't wise up and lose followers. in either case, this strategy will cease to be effective.

for now, I consider this an act of collectively intelligent consumer behavior, or what I refer to as "peer consumption." since the stream is not yet polluted, we might as well click that button. after all, we're using KRAFT as much as it's using us - if not more, because with enough clicks that don't translate into anything more, KRAFT may ultimately be losing money on this (although it's tricky to measure, of course).

but once the stream gets more polluted, I can imagine brands turning to more relevant charities/charitable activities, and having this strategy evolve into something more akin to branded utility:

http://www.psfk.com/2006/11/branded_utility_2.html

because if the situation otherwise, as I started out with, this will simply stop working.

[Paul Syrysko]

Social marketing is supposed to be rather more altruistic: http://cli.gs/cligs/show/0XEbjM . I'm not sure if this is social media or social marketing. Maybe it's both!

[Rohn Jay Miller]

I'm reminded of college days when fraternities would stage drunken charity events for, say, Muscular Dystrophy. The point was not to raise money for MD in particular, but to provide decent coverages for a night of serious drinking.

Would the cops be a little less likely to shut down a vodka-cocktails in-a-garbage-can bacchanal, if they knew some money was going to kids with MD?

Get ripped for orphans from Rwanda...etc.

[Ben Kunz]

Brian,

Yes. Please make the nonprofit spamdexing stop.

Substituting "charitable donation" for "$500 gift card" to create robotic relinks and retweets is just another form of marketers trying to buy their way into social media opinions. Perhaps if they had a real authentic message, they wouldn't have to pay.

Amazing that I work for an ad planning agency and yet recoil when I see this stuff. I guess it feels wrong to game the system -- especially paying people to give up their individual voices.

Come on, agencies. Can't you be more clever than this?

[Don Schindler]

This is another good argument for why Retweeting needs to disappear and Favorites or something should take its place.

[ScottyHendo]

Brian:

Nice work on pointing this one out. You help inspire a post of my own on "Cause-Me-To-Wretch Marketing" - http://tr.im/l1LU

@scottyhendo

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I think it's a very macaroni and cheesy way of weaseling into the stream that is not providing the brand a bit of value.

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