Celebrity: The campaign’s core revolves around the up and coming English artist Katie Vogel as she tries to build a successful music career.  You get to follow her through her journey by watching YouTube videos and her Facebook updates.

YouTube: Katie’s music videos are posted for fans to rate and review.  The YouTube Channel links directly to Facebook!  Remember that at this time Facebook is not owned by Google — this is the first I’ve seen a YouTube channel integrating with Facebook.

Facebook: You can be-friend Katie on Facebook and follow her on her journey to be a star!  You can post to your Facebook feeds directly from YouTube!

For more details check out this article on Clickz (article here).

My Two Cents:

• This is the first time we’ve seen YouTube integrated with Facebook.  Keep an eye on this — it may open up some really engaging opportunities.
• The first video includes Katie breaking up with her boyfriend — it’s a bit too convenient to be true.  I’d be careful to mix reality with fictional elements.  You will quickly alienate your fan base if they don’t trust you.
• Katie doesn’t post enough.  She needs to be very active to keep the fan base engaged.  It appears she is only posting updates every couple of days.  I’d highly suggest the she updates every couple hours.

Dunkin Donuts Facebook Page

Check out this interview about Dunkin Donut’s Facbook campaign by eMarketer (link). The campaign consisted of a forum on the Dunkin Donuts’s Facebook fan page set up to discuss DD’s healthy choice menu.  They now have over 430,000 fans!

To promote the forum DD reached out to their house list, bloggers, and through Facebook.  The big take away here is:

“Mr. Tryder: What stands out is that customers are interested in engaging directly with the brand in a relevant and honest way”

Facebook Notes Growth

Have a look at these data points posted by Compete.com (link) on Facebook’s pop in traffic to their Notes featured from the hugely popular “25 Things About Me” phenomenon.  The “25 things” concept is that you post a note in your Facebook Notes application that lists 25 things your friends may not know about you then broadcast the list to all your friends.

It all started a couple months ago — but no one ones who and how it got started!  That’s the best part — this is a completely viral phenomenon.  I’m sure Facebook could back track to the first person that posted the “25 Things” list and find the originator.  I would not be surprised the learn that Facebook created this thing themselves.  But regardless of how it got started there is some great learning for Social Network marketers:

Thoughts:

• When creating a viral campaign dig deep to find something that is very very relevant to the participant.  25 Things worked because most people like to talk about themselves and most people like to learn things about their friends they may not know.
• Viral campaigns work best when their is a high degree of “Desire to Pass Along”.  Facebook makes it easy for people to pass stuff along — the challenge of the SocNet marketer is to prompt that engine.

Facebook Connect

Commenting on Red Bull Site - Facebook Connect

Facebook deployed the Connect functionality late in 2008.  This functionality allows web sites to key off of Facebook’s social network.  For example, Red Bull’s web site allows me to register with a click on a button labeled “Facebook Connect”.  Once registered all of my Facebook friends are notified that I am now connected to the Red Bull site.  Every time I comment on the Red Bull site all my Friends on Facebook are notified.  Facebook also records what sites I am registered on for their ad targeting — more Red Bull coupons for me!

Thoughts:

- This is genius.

- If you have a web site that allows users to post comments then add this functionality now.

- This reminds me of the ewallet craze of yesteryear.  The idea was an ubiquitous service that kept your credit card info safe and usable on any site.  The idea didn’t take off because sites wanted to control their own user experience.  Facebook connect may be different — opening a new age of cross site cooperation.

- The more Facebook connects to your life the more information they know about you and the more than can hyper-target advertising to you.  I see a day when I buy a beer by scanning my cell phone at the bar — which instantly posts a message on my Facebook that I’m at Baron’s Beefhouse with a Weyerbacher in front of me.  Honey, I’ll be home late tonight.

Mountain Dew Volt Micro Site

This is a very robust online campaign for Mountain Dew Voltage.  Check out all the details at ClickZ (link here).

A couple highlights:

• Visitors got to contribute with the making of this new product by voting on flavor, packaging, ect.
• The campaign leveraged advergaming, Facebook ap, mobile, banner, email — just about everything to surround the consumer.
• The micro-site is built on and in conjunction with Yahoo.  This is an interesting way to tap into the built in audience on Yahoo.
• The campaign uses a point system to reward it’s consumers with contests and prizes.  The more the consumer is engaged with the brand the more points. More points equal more rewards.  This is advergaming PLUS continuity

The soda companies are always a bit ahead of the rest of the pack in innovating marketing.  This campaign is a good example of leveraging just about every online stratgey available.  I’ll keep an eye out for any results data.