Social Media Marketing

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Figure 3.4 Old Spice “Swaggerize” Campaign

As a result, participation and organic growth occur naturally, without the need

for costly promotions: People will join social networks like Facebook and Orkut and

use these services on their own, for hours at a time, without paid incentives.

By comparison, the participation in the Old Spice deodorant campaign—which

includes many of the same basic social elements like a blog, send-to-friend and sim-

ilar—is driven by awareness advertising and a continuous series of promotions and

contests, all of which come at a direct cost to Old Spice. This is not necessarily a nega-

tive. From a marketing perspective, this may be a very effective campaign. That said,

lacking a genuine lifestyle, passion, or cause at the root of the social motivation it’s

clear that when the promotional spending supporting the Old Spice social site stops,

the activity in the campaign will likely subside as well. Compared with the ongoing

organic (free!) growth of a passion- or lifestyle-driven community, this is likely to be a

more expensive and less engaging route, and not as likely to result in the types of col-

laborative behaviors that are associated with solid social business initiatives.

In the case of the social business, the collaboration occurs in two venues: cus-

tomers between other customers, and customers between employees. In the latter, col-

laboration generally occurs only when your customers develop sufficient trust—and

your employees develop sufficient visibility—such that the two begin a conversation