Social Network Marketing: Windfall or Pitfall?
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Written By Reprise Media | August 1, 2006 | Share This
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Would you want your teen to be ‘friends’ with The King? A News.com article argues that such MySpace profiles for companies like Burger King, Wendy’s and Proctor & Gamble are potentially more sinister than they appear because they are apt to confuse teens, especially young ones, who may not be able to tell the difference between ‘fun’ marketing gimmicks and genuine opportunities for online friendship.
The piece says that by the time kids are thirteen, their cognitive thinking is advanced enough “to untangle the play from the marketing” (the Bar Mitzvah rule?), but younger children might believe that the scary, plasticized head of Burger King’s mascot is an actual flesh-and-blood person rather than an advertisement. Not that it should be a problem on MySpace, which after all doesn’t allow members under the age of 14, ha ha.
While MySpace’s age requirements are lightly enforced, it has no rules at all that force advertisement-based profiles to identify themselves as such. And the site actively assists companies that want to make such profiles. None of the examples listed in the News.com piece seem terribly underhanded, though. The Burger King profile is clearly not attempting to be a real person. The Wendy’s character, named “SMART,” might list “movies,” “metal” and “Lost” as interests, but the cartoon square doesn’t appear to be fooling anybody, even if it’s trying; the title of one post in SMART’s forum is “wendys sux.” And a Secret-branded profile for hip-hop singer Rihanna (Secret Rihanna) is no less obvious a plug for the body spray than the performer’s Secret-sponsored tour.
Commenting on the piece, Marketing Shift’s John Gartner says that coming out with obviously “bogus” pages for mascots and other fictional characters (like movie protagonists) is fine. What’s really sleazy (and what the News.com piece doesn’t much explore) is that practice of “creating a faux persona to blather on about the wonders of a product.” Even some adults would be susceptible to such a ploy - for a limited time. “Exploiting people’s gullibility may work for a short term, but the risk of reprisal isn’t worth it,” says Gartner, and we agree. “Marketers who pose as real people online are not doing their brands a service and will eventually be discovered and receive negative backlash.”
Topics: Social Media |