Point Oh!

As we all know, the straw man is alive and well in the blogosphere. Sometimes even the best bloggers become victims of their stream-of-consciousness platform and are guilty of misrepresenting the viewpoint they’re arguing against.

Today Jeff Jarvis criticized the whole concept of social marketing by taking apart an example offered up by Stuart Elliot of the New York Times. Jarvis cited the ridiculous budgets – the ad agency charged $2-3 million for Pepperidge Farms’ social cookie site – but the reality is that budgets for social marketing campaigns are very rarely in the millions. Sure, ad agencies have been abusing advertisers for decades but most of the people in this discipline, including PR agencies, never see a million dollars out of these kinds of campaigns. In fact, the money diverted to social marketing campaigns like this often comes as a result of reducing the number of airings from a television spot and even that reduction is subtle.

Of course, this goes back to advertisers saying that they want their brands to be associated with certain attributes (cookies=connections) and so they advertise next to certain content; that is the brand advertising that makes the magazine and TV businesses churn. God bless it.

Actually, I think it is the opposite. Instead of advertising next to this content, they want to be part of the conversation and engage with consumers on a more meaningful level. I’m sure there was market research data that showed Pepperidge Farm some connection between cookies and friendship but instead of just buying their way in and piggybacking on some other form of media they decided to address it directly through the product site. My only real criticism of the campaign is that there are no real social features built into the site so there is no direct way for consumers to act on the recommendations offered (but, after all, it was done by an ad agency).

It’s worth noting that Pepperidge Farm is owned by the Campbell’s Soup Company, which has already seen some success with social marketing. Built on LiveWorld‘s platform, the Campbell’s Soup community is shining example of how social marketing can work. The company has taken a soup brand and created a search optimized online presence where people can share recipes involving Campbell’s Soup. For example, if you’re searching around for Thanksgiving recipes this week, you might stumble upon a consumer submitted recipe for stuffing with Pepperidge Farm stuffing mix and Campbell’s chicken broth. Result, Campbell’s sells more soup.

I will, however, agree with Jarvis’ assessment of social network advertising as a means of promotion. I’ve always felt these CPMs were way too high and that all the engagement stats that social networks publish, like average time on site, are rarely actually valuable to the advertisers who pepper the sites with skins, banners and roadblocks.

But think about it: You’re on one of those social sites, already being social with your friends, and so why are you going to follow a link and click to a cookie site to tell you how to be social? You’re not.

He’s right, but promoting the campaign poorly doesn’t mean that the campaign, or genre of social marketing, is worthless. There are only so many channels that make sense for Pepperidge Farm to use to try to sell cookies. Word-of-mouth has to rank in the top three reasons people will buy their cookies so if only a couple hundred people, all of which already like their product, come to this site and are motivated to connect with friends using one of the suggested methods then I have a hard time believing that a campaign like this isn’t valuable. Word-of-mouth isn’t about reaching everyone, it’s about finding a meaningful way to reach those 2-4% of customers that recommend the product to their friends.