I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: there are three rules that brand marketers should follow when entering the social media space. 1) be authentic, 2) be transparent and 3) add value. I’d like to concentrate on the 3rd rule for a moment and point out one campaign that does this exceptionally well.
Johnson & Johnson’s Acuvue brand sponsored the creation of additional functionality for a Facebook application called Graffiti. Graffiti is a wildly popular art application on Facebook that allows users to draw their own artwork and then post it to their wall or their friends’ walls. Acuvue helped Graffiti create a high-res button that instantly creates an expanded, higher resolution version of the artwork.
This is a brilliant move because it improves the user’s experience (adds value) and simultaneously ties the core benefit of the product into the functionality of the application. By engaging with the Acuvue brand, your Facebook experience literally becomes ‘clearer.’
This is a text book example of the right way for a brand to enter the social networking space. J&J is not simply thrusting the brand in front of users, or even creating a branded application. Instead, it’s improving an existing application with cool functionality, and engaging an audience during the act of creation with relevant brand assets.