Aug 07 2006
MySpace Marketing Continued: Product Profiles
The South Bend Tribune discusses the lessons that can be learned from MySpace:
If you’re in the business of communicating with young people, you can’t ignore the MySpace phenomenon.
A current darling of the marketing world, Myspace.com isn’t just a social networking site but also a place where millions of users project their likes and dislikes — where each page is like a do-it-yourself broadcasting booth.
The article goes on to discuss some basic rules for communication on MySpace, but the most interesting avenue seems to be creating a profile for a product, service, or even character to generate interest. This is from the Wall Street Journal:
Creating real-looking profiles for fictional characters is the latest step in marketers’ quest to reach the highly sought-after MySpace contingent. John Tucker, the womanizing teenager of “John Tucker Must Die,” and each of his four girlfriends have MySpace pages. (You can check John’s basketball schedule or read about Carrie’s plans for college.) So do seven of the characters from “Accepted,” a film about college students debuting this week. (Bartleby Gaines, the fictional star, lists “Fake I.D.’s” and “Monica” as his interests.) Even the creepily-quiet mascot king from the Burger King commercials has a site. (”If you’d like to be the King’s friend, he’s totally down with that,” his page introduction says.)
[...]
But the real appeal to advertisers is the opportunity to create personal relationships with millions of actual young people. “What we really struck upon is the power of friendship,” says Michael Barrett, chief revenue officer for News Corp.’s Fox Interactive Media and overseer of these deals. And this is a big circle of friends. MySpace had nearly 45.7 million unique visitors in June alone, with users spending an average of nearly two hours on the site at a time, according to Nielsen//NetRatings.
Creating relationships with a section of the market that is changing the rules for marketing. Here we have a group of impressionable kids that can easily be swayed by the latest cool trend or tricked-out site to buy a product or service. What are the MySpace users thinking? Mint Digital surveyed some users about this issue and others:
Attitudes towards businesses using MySpace for marketing?
Not worried about it at all. No feeling of intrusion. Users often hear about things being marketed through ‘bulletin’ on MySpace homepage (e.g. X-men), but easy to ignore.
More direct feedback can be found on countless blogs. Here is one from Incoherent Genius:
For one, what’s up with using myspace accounts as official websites? I won’t even link to the two newest movies doing this, because this marketing ploy annoys me. The first one is John Tucker Must Die and the second one is Step Up. I hate that. It’s stupid. I know, I shouldn’t expect much from either movie, and yeah I’m being judgemental saying this, because I have no plans on seeing either one of them. But really? Do I need to see them to know that they suck? And I guess even though I’m 21, I’m probably at least five years too old to see either one of them, but still, I’m appalled by them.
I guess that sums it up.
Also blogging:
- Affiliate Marketing Online: Does It Make or Take Your Money?
- The Brand Underground
- My Space, Millions of Users
- Colonising MySpace
- The Art of Using Blogs to Their Full Marketing Potential
- Blogs: The Hidden Ace Up Your Sleeve
