Subversive advertising has been used to entice people to purchase a product or service without knowing they really wanted to for years. The truth of the matter is that we don’t like to feel we have been tricked into wanting something, we like to feel we have made our own choices and come to our own decisions and chosen something based on our personal preferences. Unfortunately, as any internet marketing professional will tell you this is not the case.
Social Networking
The general public like to follow what the rest of the public generally do, and therefore tend to buy products or use services that are recommended by likeminded individuals. This is where social networking sites such as Facebook could make money. After the fiasco over privacy, mentioned in an earlier post, it is evident that social networking sites need to monetise their members through advertising, without selling personal data.
Internet Marketing
An online marketing conference held in New York last week unveiled the current trend towards encouraging members of social networking sites to collect points by telling friends to buy into a particular brand. This actually has the potential to work on a number of levels. For a start, everyone likes to get things for free; so if the reward for boosting the profile of Pizza Hut is a free pizza, we are going to pass on whatever encouragement is needed to our peers to get them to purchase one too. The second factor is that people will only chase the things that they really want and like to get them for free. Ergo, if a particular service is sub standard according to the consumer, no-one is going to recommend it, because they will not want it again, and therefore whatever comes recommended by a ‘friend’ is more likely to be worth trying.
Subversive Advertising
This produces a type of trusted advertising which leads to the third factor. We want what our friends have, and if it is good enough for them, it is good enough for us. Although the whole process is completely transparent, when a picture arrives from Joe Bloggs eating a particular brand of pizza we will know it was sent because he wants to get another for free; it is a form of subversive advertising that could actually achieve success in the internet marketing arena.
This form of marketing can harness text, photo and video sharing on a number of platforms and there are currently a number of companies who are hoping to cash in on the advertising ploy. The result however could be that as consumers get rewarded for putting in the advertising leg work, marketing companies may well see a downturn in profits as their role in internet marketing becomes redundant.
Related posts:
- Can Social Networking Sites Be Your Own Personal Link Directory?
- Would You Pay For Foursquare’s Social Media Internet Marketing?
- Could Facebook Privacy Fiasco Affect Internet Marketing?
- Is Facebook SEO Essential For Successful Internet Marketing?
- Protecting Our Children From Social Networking Perverts