Since the advent of social networking, businesses have been coming up with increasingly inventive ways of utilising them to their advantage. Twitter, Facebook and Tumblr are now some of the most lucrative advertising platforms on the market, with companies using them to connect with consumers and receive feedback on their products.
The Special K brand, owned by cereal giants Kellogg’s, has come up with a new initiative aimed at pushing their new product to the top of shopper’s wish list. Rather than spending a large amount of money on television adverts, they have opened a “Tweet Shop” in London’s Soho district.
In essence, the idea is a basic one – the age old marketing scheme of offering freebies in return for the consumer’s time. However, by using popular social network Twitter, they hope to make new product Special K Cracker crisps a trending topic worldwide thus increasing sales massively.
All consumers have to do is pop into the commercial property and sample the new low calorie snack. Then, after posting a review of the product on their Twitter page, they receive a free packet of the crisps, usually retailed at 60 pence.
The store is staffed by Special K Girls, wearing the now iconic Special K uniform of a red dress, who check each customer’s Tweet before handing them their free snack.
This is the first time the cereal brand has launched a savoury product, and Kellogg’s clearly wishes to make an impact through the use of social networking. So far, consumer responses have been overwhelmingly positive with the majority of shoppers praising the inventiveness of the initiative.
Special K spokeswoman Sarah Case says; “The value of positive endorsements on social media sites is beyond comparison, so we are excited to be the first company to literally use social currency instead of financial currency to launch this new product in our bespoke Special K shop.”
Of course, Kellogg’s is not the first company to cotton on to the idea of using social currency as a means of advertising their brand. Earlier this year, both Amazon and Netflix introduced “referral” schemes on their Facebook and Twitter pages.
In this case, Facebook and Twitter users simply advertised the companies through their pages on the sites, and if their friends or followers signed up to either company they would be rewarded with discount codes redeemable on the websites. While this may seem to be a case of the companies losing money by reeling off discounts left, right and centre, the idea is actually very clever.
Many Twitter users update their page on a daily basis, often tweeting several times a day. This helps to gain them followers, and the more followers they have the more people they can reach. Therefore, rather than putting adverts out on the television or paying for advertising space on web pages, the companies save on advertising revenue even while giving users of their websites money off on products.
Additionally, studies have shown that consumers are more likely to spend money when they have a discount available to them, so Amazon and Netflix are subliminally attracting existing users to purchase from their websites even if the user had not planned to spend any money before discovering the initiative. In essence, the companies are both making and saving money at the same time.
Do you think social networking initiatives such as those used by Kellogg’s, Netflix and Amazon are the future of business advertising, or do you think the traditional mediums of television and radio will still continue to be popular in the future? Have you visited the “Tweet Shop” and posted a review to Twitter, and if so did you enjoy the experience?
