A friend of my friend is…. a brand?
Brands can tell me their products are awesome until they’re blue in the face and I will rarely believe them, but if a friend loves something, inevitably I’ll try it. It’s simple,; word-of-mouth marketing works better than any other type. How the heck else could you explain my father’s love of BluBlockers in the 90’s? (http://www.blublocker.com don’t click on that, the site is as bad as you remember the ads.) There’s no way he fell for the commercials and thought he’d see “brighter” when it’s sunny out by putting on sun glasses?!?! I believe the same crappy orange hunting safety glasses are now being shilled as HD wraparounds, or something like that. But at some point someone showed him a pair and he fell in love*.
Publisher's Note: I don't have any pictures of the old man wearing these in the wild... crap
So how do brands take that dynamic online? How can they get you turn to a friend wearing a dumb pair of glasses and ask them why the hell they have them on? Facebook has started to put that together with how they’ve changed the “Recommend a Friend” system. Now brands are part of that equation, what my friends have becomes fans of is suggested to me.
This is a great move and absolutely the next logical step in word-of-mouth marketing online. Who can you trust more than your friends? Certainly not a brand on their own, but if all your friends have become fans of it, why not? It’s a smart strategy and I just hope brands stick with it long enough to allow organic growth to work like it should. Eventually they will attract the right audiences and because the Facebook comminty is making the right suggestions; their value and the trust of the consumer will spread in a positive way. One that brands couldn’t pay enough to get today through TV ads or shipping all the BluBlockers than can muster to all my father’s friends.
*Full disclosure. While they made you look like a total douchebag, they were kind of sweet to read with.
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