Facebook’s Missed Brand Opportunity
Posted by Nick O'Neill on July 21st, 2008 9:00 AMIn speaking with Peter Corbett with iStrategyLabs the other day over dinner, we realized that there was one missing opportunity on Facebook which could be used to help brands and their pages get promoted more effectively. If users could tag brand instances the same way that you can currently tag users, there would be a large promotional opportunity. For instance, imagine if you take a picture of yourself next to your car and would like to tag it as “MINI Cooper”.
If you were actually a fan of the MINI Cooper on Facebook, you would be able to tag the photo and that photo would be displayed on the brand’s page. This way you don’t need to individually navigate to and upload photos on the actual brand’s page. It’s a great opportunity for brands and a great way to extend the existing platform. Facebook videos can currently be tagged as well so that would be yet another opportunity for Facebook.
There are a number of competitive services that are working to develop brand tagging in media some of which are completely automated. While I can see this technology being useful, enabling users to tag images and videos with brands themselves would be sufficient in my own opinion. Do you think tagging images and videos with brands would be smart? Why hasn’t Facebook done this yet?
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July 21st, 2008 at 8:50 am
Interesting idea Nick. There are companies whose whole business is to look for misuse of brands online. Brand tagging in Facebook definitely could be used for both positive and negative brand promotion. For example, tagging Red Bull in photos of passed out drunk college kids by a toilet might not be what Red Bull wants to portray.
But then again, as long as the brand got immediate notification from Facebook whenever it’s brand was tagged, then they could block the tags. It could work with the correct monitoring controls in place for the companies.
July 21st, 2008 at 9:03 am
What would end up happening is that people would upload picures of Chinese sweatshops and tag them Nike or Wall Mart. Imagine what photos would show up on all the pages for politicians.
July 21st, 2008 at 9:50 am
Interesting idea Nick. There are companies whose whole business is to look for misuse of brands online. Brand tagging in Facebook definitely could be used for both positive and negative brand promotion. For example, tagging Red Bull in photos of passed out drunk college kids by a toilet might not be what Red Bull wants to portray.
But then again, as long as the brand got immediate notification from Facebook whenever it’s brand was tagged, then they could block the tags. It could work with the correct monitoring controls in place for the companies.
July 21st, 2008 at 9:56 am
Concerns over tagged content would be easily remedied by allowing the brand page admin to approve a tag on any piece of content first before it becomes associated with the brand via their page.
Additionally, this would be a major boon to brands looking for user generated content to use in their campaigns….and a simple disclaimer that reads “by tagging this, you give us the right to use it however we like”. That could be hairy…but interesting!
Oh, and I just realized I wrote about a “branded tagging” methodology back in 2006…not related to facebook but could be interesting to read nonetheless: http://www.advercation.com/2006/08/15/branded-t...
July 21st, 2008 at 10:03 am
What would end up happening is that people would upload picures of Chinese sweatshops and tag them Nike or Wall Mart. Imagine what photos would show up on all the pages for politicians.
July 21st, 2008 at 10:56 am
Concerns over tagged content would be easily remedied by allowing the brand page admin to approve a tag on any piece of content first before it becomes associated with the brand via their page.
Additionally, this would be a major boon to brands looking for user generated content to use in their campaigns….and a simple disclaimer that reads “by tagging this, you give us the right to use it however we like”. That could be hairy…but interesting!
Oh, and I just realized I wrote about a “branded tagging” methodology back in 2006…not related to facebook but could be interesting to read nonetheless: http://www.advercation.com/2006/08/15/branded-tagging/
July 21st, 2008 at 11:22 am
Check out the Plink Application on Facebook- http://apps.facebook.com/plinkphoto/
We’ve been working on it for several months. Basically it let’s you click & drag on your photos to tag brands (what your wearing or using), stores (where you bought something) & comments that live inside the photo. We hope to hit other social networks as we grow & refine. - Chris Guerra
July 21st, 2008 at 12:22 pm
Check out the Plink Application on Facebook- http://apps.facebook.com/plinkphoto/
We’ve been working on it for several months. Basically it let’s you click & drag on your photos to tag brands (what your wearing or using), stores (where you bought something) & comments that live inside the photo. We hope to hit other social networks as we grow & refine. - Chris Guerra
July 22nd, 2008 at 4:22 pm
Nick,
I agree with your assumption. But I think it will be the domain of third party app providers. With the proper business model, there is a tremendous opportunity here to not only provide brands with an opportunity to interact more strongly with their consumer base, but also to aggregate data which will create greater efficiencies in the consumer product marketing sphere. I’m currently in the process of developing a brand within the social networking sphere exclusively. Doing so has presented me with some interesting challenges and frustrations, but as I’ve found in the past, my needs are shared with the market at large. Based upon some initial findings in my research I am convinced that consumers will buy into this sort of feature. It feeds on their most basic exibitionist needs. People like to show off what they’ve worked hard to acquire, be that products, or clothing which best demostrates their style. Its a value added feature for consumers, and a gold mine for whomever creates the perfect gateway. I’m going to look into your app Chris. Maybe we can talk offline and converge our efforts somehow.
July 22nd, 2008 at 5:22 pm
Nick,
I agree with your assumption. But I think it will be the domain of third party app providers. With the proper business model, there is a tremendous opportunity here to not only provide brands with an opportunity to interact more strongly with their consumer base, but also to aggregate data which will create greater efficiencies in the consumer product marketing sphere. I’m currently in the process of developing a brand within the social networking sphere exclusively. Doing so has presented me with some interesting challenges and frustrations, but as I’ve found in the past, my needs are shared with the market at large. Based upon some initial findings in my research I am convinced that consumers will buy into this sort of feature. It feeds on their most basic exibitionist needs. People like to show off what they’ve worked hard to acquire, be that products, or clothing which best demostrates their style. Its a value added feature for consumers, and a gold mine for whomever creates the perfect gateway. I’m going to look into your app Chris. Maybe we can talk offline and converge our efforts somehow.
July 22nd, 2008 at 7:38 pm
Congrats Chris, you guys already got scooped by 17. http://www.seventeen.com/fun-stuff/17-buzz/plin...
July 22nd, 2008 at 8:38 pm
Congrats Chris, you guys already got scooped by 17. http://www.seventeen.com/fun-stuff/17-buzz/plink-facebook-clothes-061908
August 12th, 2008 at 11:30 am
As the owner of a nonprofit fan page on facebook, i was thinking about this the other day too. It would be very beneficial. Because of the way MySpace is set up with profiles, I noticed that people starting tagging bars and venues they took photos at, then it would show up in my friend feed. good branding opp for them. facebook should find a way to do the same!
August 12th, 2008 at 12:30 pm
As the owner of a nonprofit fan page on facebook, i was thinking about this the other day too. It would be very beneficial. Because of the way MySpace is set up with profiles, I noticed that people starting tagging bars and venues they took photos at, then it would show up in my friend feed. good branding opp for them. facebook should find a way to do the same!