Props to @danielppage for sending me the link to a really cool IKEA Facebook marketing campaign.
Here are the deets:
IKEA was looking to promote the opening of their new store in Malmo, Sweden. They created a Facebook profile for their store manager, Gordon Gustavsson, and uploaded 12 showroom photos to his profile. Then they gave away the furniture to the first person that tagged their name on it. Smart, non? People started tagging like mad fools, which then published to their personal stream and alerted their friends and family to the contest.
As word spread virally through Facebook, people started clamoring for more photos, publishing comments and discussing the furniture in their personal feeds...thus essentially promoting IKEA for free. And then with the tagging of the furniture, people willingly and gladly created and participated in a virtual interactive IKEA catalogue.
So instead of just relying on a static banner ad to get their message out - IKEA got people talking, interacting with their product which resulted in far more conversation and branding. It's not clear on whether this would work within Facebook's new promotional guidelines (likely not) but it's a great example of the power of viral marketing.
Watch the video that describes the campaign in detail.
