Facebook’s revolution: re-inventing marketing (think before you click on ‘Like’)

On a recent post, I drew an historical comparison to show how Facebook’s new features, opening up its ‘likes’ and other functionality to the entire Web, could spawn a new era of the Web. My interpretation is that this is a first step into a new sea of opportunities to help people read/discover information, transact (shop), while connecting with friends (the RTC Web like Read-Transact-Connect). While many of those features were previously set apart, Facebook made an interesting attempt to put them together. The most visible is certainly the ability, through the ‘Like’ button, to create ‘social commerce’ experiences, as summarized in a blog by Jeremiah.  In a nutshell, it’s the ability for a site (online but coming soon offline) to customize your shopping experience based on social elements, such as what your friends like. Of course, the game remains open whether it’s Facebook or others that will ride this growth phase

What Jeremiah Owyang and I forgot to mention came to me on my Facebook newsfeed a few days ago:

I indeed tested the ‘Like’ button on the Levi’s store, on the 501 a few weeks ago (so outside of Facebook). It somehow gave the right to Levi’s to send me a message on my Newsfeed, just like when you ‘Like’ other pages.  As a consumer, I felt slightly puzzled. So, all those ‘Like’ buttons that I innocently click on the Web will give their owner a write access to my newsfeed ?

For marketer, this means much more. First, it shows how quickly (some) marketers are figuring out those new tools. But beyond, it made me think that even though the promises of the ‘like’ button seemed simple (virality and traffic), its implications are far-reaching on almost any marketing technique.

Fundamentally, through those ‘like’ buttons and other features in the social web, many old marketing techniques can now be re-invented:

• Permission-based, direct marketing…on an object-level. Maybe you like a certain book, not so much the author nor the genre and would like to get update about this book only. Or only about Levi’s 501.
• Merged online/offline experiences. Imagine you would receive a handheld device at a given store (eg apparel), with the ability to scan and ‘like’ any bar codes. You could connect back online and look back at what you liked, share comments with friends. But you could as well get that information from the store. See as well insightful post from John Battele.
• ‘Like search’ engine advertising’. As mentioned previously in my blog, the holy grail is to combine social elements and algorithmic to create a yet unseen search tool (think Facebook and Bing combination). Yet, a pure ‘Like search’ can be of high interest: you search among the ‘likes’ of your friends to find out stuff they like, before purchasing. What is the paid equivalent of the ‘Search Engine advertising’?  I bet, a sponsored ‘like’ by someone famous or influent could do the trick.
• Like-based price promotion. That’s just the example of Levi’s above. Not very creative, but frankly that is not what price promotion is about.
• Like-based display advertising. Not yet for the real world (this would really be the ‘Minority report’), but coming soon to a Faceook near you. Facebook team quote (imaginary): ‘Thank you Levi’s for experimenting social commerce with us. But now Diesel made us an attractive offer so all people who clicked on a ‘Like’ button on your site will be served Diesel ads forever. That’s business, sorry’.

This last example is showing the inherent risks for marketers to have a single company like Facebook managing this experience, and the need for an open standard alternative. Not to mention the risks on privacy faced by individuals.

The potential of a social Web, combined possibly with offline experiences, is simply huge, and we should certainly congratulate Facebook for showing the way…yet remain careful not too simply give it the keys of your company by becoming ‘Facebook-centric’.

Expect to see waves of disruption and consolidation for industries and companies to slow to adapt.