To reach a target of 20 000 fans Savanna ran a fan recruitment drive, partnering with animal charities – promising fans that once the target has been reached 2 000 blankets will be given to puppies in need. The call to action was simple and the campaign went viral immediately – “Tag your friends, get them to Like our page, and spread the dry!”
The target of 20 000 fans was reached this morning and the page is still growing.
i hate these sort of things. if they really gave a shitzu (it’s not a swear word, it’s a dog) about dogs then they would have just done it. This is the chain email of facebook. “if you dont join Savanna and tag all your friends you obviously hate dogs and want them all run over by a car. what kind of sick person are you?!” no. i just dont want to be spammed by a cider asking what i’m doing this weekend and will i be doing it with a cider.
Ai Sneaky – that’s the beauty of social media – its entirely optional. This is obviously not for you. Move on. Its aimed at the 20 000 people that did sign up. Love Savanna, love dogs, gimme more.
I always associated Savanna with off-beat humour. This idea seems off-brand to me. There’s nothing “dry” about this communication at all. And using likkle doggies to boost Likes is a cheap trick to gain popularity.
It’s done, bit you can redo it. Liquifruit win nothing but a good feeling, 3 months ago.
It might be a weak attempt to up their numbers, but it worked.
They are on 21k fans now. What I find interesting is that all their previous campaigns on Facebook were quite silly/dry/on-brand/relevant, and they never worked, the fan numbers only ticked up by about 1,000 at a time. This simple idea did for some reason. I’d like to know what media supported this. This was probably super cheap to execute as well – there were no tabs developed, only the couple of profile pictures.
Plus they managed to get around the sweepstakes guidelines from Facebook.
@NEO it wasn’t optional when I was tagged in 7 different images by now ex-friends on Facebook.
Giving consumers the tools and licence wrapped in emotional black mail to spam their friends is not what I deem good or clever marketing.
RT and win competitions have also been proved to “work” does that make them good ideas or tactics?
This is classic badvertising.
If this came out of my agency I would be embarressed and ashamed.
I think there’s an obvious issue here – Reach and numbers as key objectives in digital. It makes brands do questionable spammy things. I think the campaign is brilliant (sneaky, yes) and admittedly I’m jealous, as my clients also put pressure on reach and numbers. Whether the campaign is on brand or not, or reaching the right audience, is another debate – I believe it may do the brand more harm than good in terms of their social media positioning, as is already evident on the Facebook page. Or perhaps there’s an opportunity to take the brand in a new direction..
If all this campaign is being measured on is cost and effectiveness (number of Likes), then it’s a really good idea, and all credit to the agency behind it.
I personally think that’s a narrow-minded view. Unless Savanna is in the process of dropping its “dry” positioning, I would argue that this communication is off-brand, and the inconsistency of its message (versus the rest of the brand’s communications) is eroding the brand values in the minds of the public. So I’d agree with Mari that it’s ultimately doing Savanna more harm then good. There must be more creative, relevant and on-brand ways to increase Facebook Likes then by simply resorting to a scattershot spam approach.
Sheesh, now I’m thirsty. Time for a Hunter’s. Have a good weekend!