Marketing Examples on MySpace
April 26th, 2006 by Michael Gray in Advertising, Case Study, Media, SEM, SEO, Social NetworksIf you're new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed. Read my top posts or learn more about Michael Gray. Want more frequent updates follow me on Twitter. Thanks for visiting!
I will admit when I first stumbled into MySpace I really didn’t think it was much more than a bunch of horrendously ugly pages with really cheezy music. However if you are willing to dig a little deeper you can find some legitimate companies and organizations who are using MySpace. If you’re ready let’s dive in …
Chances are if you are like me you think MySpace is slanted towards the teen and early twenty-ish demographic. While I don’t place too much stock in how truthful people are when they enter demographic data, I can say MySpace has a lot more than just teenagers. One of the key factors you’ll need to accept if you are going to take advantage of marketing opportunities on MySpace is it’s a hangout for the hip and trendy set, and not neccisarily just teens. If you’re potential customer is more likely to drive a Toyota Scion instead of a Chrysler Mini-Van then you are in the right spot.
One of the first thing MySpace did right was get popular celebrities (or their ‘people’) to set up spaces. For example the pages of Ryan Seacrest, Madonna, Sarah Jessica Parker, Jessica Simpson, and Oprah seem to be legitimate profiles. Whereas those of Condoleza Rice and George Bush hopefully aren’t fooling many people. Once the right celebrities are involved fans will follow with the hopes of getting added as “friends”.
Some other important areas of MySpace center around music, TV and pop culture. Fox saw this coming and for 2006 set up profiles for the American Idol contestants, for example see Chris Daughtry’s page. Other well known musicians who are on MySpace include LL Cool J, Mary J Blige, The Red Hot Chilli Peppers, and The Pussycat Dolls. The tie in to clubs and music so strong it’s quite common to come across DJ’s or bands who are heavily promoting themselves on MySpace.
Next let’s look at some examples of corporations and big businesses who are using MySpace. The energy drink Red Bull has a page as does Aquafina, however traditional soft drinks like Coke and Pepsi aren’t, and if they are they are hidden pretty well because I went looking for them. In my opinion this is pretty serious oversight on their part. One of the more interesting examples of corporations in MySpace comes from Wendy’s with a page named squarevision. If features the square Wendy’s hamburgers in a series of flash movies.
While some corporations are clearly dipping their big toe into the waters at MySpace there are still plenty of opportunities there, and since Steve Rubel who now works at Edelman who has MySpace as a client I’ll pass along a few suggestions.
- The first thing I’d like to see is official company or celebrity profiles identified. It would really be helpful to know if I was looking an something that has been authorized, a devoted fan site, or something put in place by a clever prankster.
- Next I’d like to see MySpace try to woo more “legitimate” businesses into area. Soft drink companies, car companies, movies, TV shows, even candy like Orbitz and Mentos seem to be a natural fit.
- Next how about showcasing some of the more interesting, well thought out or well executed MySpace pages. For example Squidoo sends out the Squidoo Lens of the Day
- Lastly would an official MySpace HTML/CSS editor be too much to ask, all sorts of people are developing all sorts of tools on their own, and I’m not so sure I trust all of them to not do something funny to my page like putting in a hidden link or two
I hope that part II of my MySpace series has convinced you MySpace can be a serious marketing tool, in Part III we are going to take a peek at the Dark Alley’s of MySpace.
UPDATE:After this post was written but before it was published Disney came out with a tie-in for the upcoming Pirates of the Caribbean - Dead Man’s Chest that is exactly what I was talking about.
Sphere It
April 26th, 2006 at 7:12 am
RHCP on MySpace?!
NNNNNNNOOOOOOOOoooooo…..
April 27th, 2006 at 8:00 am
[...] So we’ve taken a high level view of MySpace and how it works, and touched on some spam techniques you are likely to encounter, IMHO MySpace has some attractive things to offer as far a s marketing opportunities. There are legitimate organizations using MySpace ansd we’ll look at some in Part II, Marketing Examples on My Space. [...]
April 27th, 2006 at 9:09 am
[...] Si tienes una banda de música no se a que esperas para hacerte con una cuenta MySpace y promocionarte. También creo que tiene muchas posibilidades para el linkbuilding y directamente para el spam ( infinitas ). Si tienes una empresa o web puedes aprovechar MySpace para promocionarte. Ver las seríes de Graywolf sobre myspace. [...]
May 3rd, 2006 at 4:17 pm
There’s now a site that tracks the celebrities that have profiles on myspace. Most of the profiles seem to be the real thing. I’ve seen links to the profiles for Dave Chappelle, Scarlett Johansson, Vince Vaughn, and get this… Chuck Norris! http://www.myspacecelebrities.com
May 4th, 2006 at 2:28 am
Other than the normal ways, how do you get links to your myspace profile? Is there a directory, or a list of recently updated sites, or similar?
May 4th, 2006 at 5:24 am
Normal links are one bet, although if you can do something “exceptional” and get viral links you’d be golden. Other than that joining groups, getting friends dropping comments, would all work.
May 8th, 2006 at 8:42 pm
[...] Gray Wolf looks at Myspace, GW has a pretty good series going on about mySpace, I enjoyed. [...]
June 28th, 2006 at 3:51 pm
Is it just me or does this seem like the old GeoCities part deux? I mean sure it’s hipper and on the surface less accessible to the older crowd, but over all, same thing different day, but more critical acclaim.
July 20th, 2006 at 5:44 pm
Just in case anyone was wondering, part 1 of the myspace articles is at:
http://www.wolf-howl.com/seo/getting-to-know-myspace/
(couldn’t find it easily on this page)
and the preceeding post before that one is:
http://www.wolf-howl.com/seo/looking-at-myspace/
December 28th, 2006 at 7:10 pm
Excellent blog, with some great suggestions!
• Celeb profile - So true! There should be something on the lines of a MySpace ‘Salute’ that people… (Not just celebs) submit for Myspace approval to verify the person in the photo is actually them.
• An official MySpace HTML WYSIWYG editor would be splendid! I’m sick of seeing people use external wysiwyg editors or pre-made profiles that they then use and have alsorts of added advertising tags added.
The only gripe I have with myspace is the amount of fake profiles made by people trying to phish for peoples user login details or companies/marketers randomly adding me with ‘adder robot’ type software.
Regards
John
PS; Happy Holidays all!
May 31st, 2007 at 6:54 pm
Thanks for the great content, I coach and train people how to use My Space, You Tube and other web 2.0 Marketing techniques keep up the good work,
Robin Marroquin
http://www.myspace.com/youincmarketing
August 9th, 2007 at 2:25 am
You’re right about the celebrities thing for sure, but now all it takes is getting featured!
It’s actually not that hard to get featured, and you don’t have to use adders (like everyone hates) to get lots of friends either.
I’ve included all the secrets on my blog right here!
http://www.nickjag.com/
September 1st, 2007 at 1:57 pm
I understand having celebrities & companies on MySpace. (e.g.: I added Madonna & Cherry Coke as “friends” to name a few) but why are pages made for dead celebrites? I don’t mind the page itself, (e.g. I’ve requested Marilyn Monroe & James Dean as “friends” but when someone is posing as the decendant, while writing the information, (or worse the “blogs”) it’s actually kind of creepy. Am I wrong in my thinking, because I really want to know!