In spite of estimates that the social network is costing UK companies £130m a day in employees’ time, one online marketer reckons that brands are missing a trick by failing to engage with “social media”.
A report from Morgan Stanley last week said that the likes of YouTube, Facebook and MySpace now take up 16 per cent of worldwide time online. But Tamar, an online marketing agency, reckons that the travel and financial services industries – traditionally big spenders on internet advertising – aren’t keeping up. Only three of the “ten top brands” in each sector surveyed by Tamar have an official presence on social media.
Retail brands, however, are doing better, with “all top brands” using marketing on least one of MySpace, Facebook and Bebo. Retailers are also more popular targets for social network “comment”, with 16 times as many unofficial user groups as travel companies and ten times as many as financial brands.
Marks & Spencer seems to inspire particular loyalty on Facebook, with the Erotic Voice of M&S food ads appreciation society attracting 1,954 members, and the Marks & Spencer food appreciation society accruing 703 members – neither of which were, apparently, created by the retailer itself.
The unofficial British Airways appreciation society has 463 members,with some commenters even going as far as thanking crew for particular flights. But that’s tempered by 326 people joined a group calling for the resignation of BA’s chief executive Willie Walsh.
All of these, however, pale into insignificance next to the populist draw of free writing implements: Facebook’s Every time I go to IKEA I steal the little wooden pencils! group has 4,669 members.
The numbers may be small relative to the millions of people who use Facebook, but do not look insignificant when compared, with, say the number of people complaining about adverts to the ASA. The most controversial ad of 2007, the Department of Health’s “Get unhooked” anti-smoking campaign, topped the charts with 774 complaints.
And they can be effective too. A campaign on Facebook last summer against HSBC’s plans to remove graduate’s interest-free overdrafts attracted so much attention that the bank reversed its decision.
“The whole point of social media is that it does give everybody a voice online,” says Tanya Goodin, Tamar’s chief executive. “Anybody who ignores Facebook does so at their peril.” While the groups are niche, “there’s no other way for people to get together efficiently and effectively.”
Tamar’s research found that travel brands which do have an official presence on social networks attracted 59% more unofficial supporter groups than brands that don’t. But rather than just launching a fan club, Ms Goodin suggests brands follow Topshop’s lead and create applications which allow customers to comment on products – effectively free market research.
Measuring the effectiveness of such campaigns remains tricky. But brands also need to be careful they don’t fall foul of new European legislation – coming into UK law in May – that prohibits “falsely representing oneself as a customer” when seeding messages, blog posts or viral ads online.