Social Networking: Personal Experience of the Masses

In my opinion the advertising possibilities of Social Networking websites such as Facebook are unlimited. Let's take a local clothing boutique for example - Victoire in Ottawa Downtown. Victorie specializes in independent Canadian designers and local Ottawa designers. The key customers of the boutique are women 18-25 years old. Now, how do you reach these women locally without spending ton of money (one would assume the ad budget isn't very big in this case)? Well, first of all, Victorie doesn't have an official website but... has a MySpace page (check it out at http://profile.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=user.viewprofile&friendID=87473347) . The page's got all the store info you need, a blog you can subscribe to, some pictures plus a bit of a personality expressed in the profile details and added music.

How can you expand the boutique's reach further? Facebook, off course. Undoubtedly, Facebook beats anything else in reaching that 18-25 demo. You can start with creating a Facebook page for the store to establish some interactive presence. Facebook users can become Victorie's fans and whenever they interact with the page, their friends will automatically get the updates in their News Feeds. Seeing friends taking some action with the company adds a personal aspect to Victorie, and the three sentences of the social story can create much more awareness and potentially generate more sales than any other local media vehicle. Taking it even further, Victorie can create an application with the Facebook Platform allowing the target audience to have an even more personal experience with the company. Something like "here is all the clothing and accessories we've got. Now choose your model and dress her the way you want". Or "create your wish list and post it on your profile" or "message your fav items to your friends". Really, sky is the limit. If Victorie wants to get some first-hand opinions from its potential customers, all they've got to do is create a poll.

As you can see REAL brand/product/company interaction is a REAL trend in advertising these days, specially if you want to reach the young and restless. We don't want messages targeted at masses anymore. We want to have a personal experience and we want to decide what that experience is going to be.