Coolatta’s Cool – Online Social Media Marketing Gone Right
There’s something really fantastic about what Dunkin Donuts is doing with their online social media marketing effort through Facebook; it totally threw me off. Don’t get me wrong, this is not the first time I’ve heard of such campaigns and I sometimes try to get my clients to go along with it but….well, skeptics abound. Somehow, there’s something really endearing about the way they’re going about it.
How are they going about it?
First, let me get this out of the way before I explode. For the life of me, I cannot understand why Starbucks is not catching on?! Don’t they know enough about online social networking to be in it already – or at least, do it the right way?! Starbucks, surprisingly, is still stuck in the middle of nowhere….literally….trying to combine their offline and online social media marketing thing together and achieving….not much. They SHOULD be frustrated.
They should fire the advertising company doing it for them. Sending cups of Starbucks coffee from friend to friend can only do so much knowing that most of us Facebook users are already quite tired of adding applications to our already mashed-up Facebook profile page.
Have you seen the Coolatta sweepstakes ran by the Big Donut recently on Facebook? They don’t have as many fans as the Twilight series (yet) but they’re quickly catching up with eight-hundred-thousand fans of their Facebook page and counting. Accordingly (I’ve not tried this for myself), you can upload a photo of yourself on the Donut’s Facebook wall with a Coolatta and then add a caption to it. After that, it will be a BINGO moment for you – wait for them to go around on a random-selection process and BINGO, it’s either you get it or you don’t.
The kind of prizes that they’re offering are stuff like TVs, iPhones, wardrobe, flights….etc. Really cool stuff, I have to admit…for a chance to win that all you have to do is to get one of those Coolattas and snap a picture of yourself with it? Man, you can even borrow it from the guy behind the counter and have your instant Coolatta picture taken, does it matter? Not really.
Anyway, the main purpose is to get people to spread the message and encourage action….and it’s the perfect way to enhance branding compared to Starbucks’ meek effort in getting people to pass Starbucks coffee around. Most of the time, for your information, I ignore these cups of coffees (sorry friends, but I prefer REAL coffee) and sadly, it does nothing to people like me.
It’s not targeting the target market properly and not encouraging any form of active participation at all….and the keyword would be ACTIVE PARTICIPATION….and AHEM, it does not include spamming or asking fans of the Facebook page to circulate a message to as many of their friends as possible. That’s viral and in case you don’t already know, viral marketing is a big turn off, does NOT work on Facebook…or any other online media marketing sites available to us at the moment.
Good on Dunkin’ Donuts. Now I am off to see if I can photoshop a picture of me with that Coolatta thing and win myself an awesome holiday.
August 12th, 2009 at 10:57 pm
Hm? Why does Viral marketing not work again? Can you pls elaborate & give a case study? Tx
September 3rd, 2009 at 3:47 am
Melinda, viral marketing that worked many years ago does not work anymore (not as effectively) because it’s old and people are used to it. More often than not, search engines, gmail and even facebook and twitter is using robots to capture them. twitter deletes automated replies and mentions. if facebook finds you having more than one account for the purpose of promoting something (solely), then they’ll delete your account.
most of these stuff are done by viral marketers.
hope that explains it for you