I read about these two fun examples of how companies can promote their brand in the social space, through the use of really simple and creative ideas. They both provide something fun and unique to the folks online, making them ripe for the sharing. They also both came to me from BrandFlakes For Breakfast. So, many thanks to the wonderful folks over there for keeping my RSS reader entertained.
The first example is made by web security company, webroot. They bost that they protect you and your computer, but are pushing further with a fun & free new tool that protects your social media profiles as well. It protects you from yourself, in fact, with it’s Social Media Sobriety Test. This tool helps to prevent you from making an ass of yourself on Facebook, Twitter, etc. while you’re drunk, by locking you out if you’re too far gone to make good decisions. Take a look:
The video is a bit dry, but I love this. Is it useful? Sure. Will people actually use it? Probably not. BUT, is it being shared around and getting the name webroot out there? SURE IS! Already, 11,289 people have liked the site (Nov 17 @ noon EST), there is a constant stream of tweets with people sharing the site, and google trends is showing “webroot” queries above its relatively consistent average since the site launched in early November (loosely correlated I’m sure, but still).
The second example (coming to BrandFlakes via blastr.com) is from Architects Southwest, an architecture firm based in Lafayette Louisiana (read: a random architecture firm). They created a competition for designs of the Best Zombie Safe House. I think this is simply a very fun twist on the same-old user-submitted competition strategy, especially because it’s about Zombies. Who doesn’t love Zombies?
Zombie Safe House Winner
Now I don’t know what the objective was behind this. It could have been pure awareness, or it could have been to identify young new architectural talent, but either way it’s fun, and it was CHEAP! (they used a wordpress.com hosted blog and their Facebook fan page to run it). Is it working? Well, they aren’t doing to well with cultivating fans of their companies Facebook fan page, they have over 2000 votes on a small Zombie related poll they took on the Safe House blog, there are lots and lots of tweets about the contest. Google didn’t have enough search results to show us any trends, but still… A valiant effort from a small company that wanted to get their name talked about.
So, what does this all mean? You tell me. I just like how solid and fun the ideas are.
Thanks!
Brian
