Apr
7
Digesting Sources
Filed Under Uncategorized |
Digesting Sources
Real Shop in Facebook World Breathes life into Mars. 2/21/08 Marketing Week.
New application on facebook, Mars Celebrate, allows users to send friends candy. The user pays via PayPal account and a message is sent to the friend. The friend enters their mobile phone number and an SMS barcode is sent to their phone so that they can redeem it at any local store.
People Quoted in the Article:
Lynette Cowan- Client Services director at the Light Agency
Developed Mars Celebrate, says “We began talks with Mars’ Agency Mesh marketing about a facebook sweetshop and they thought it was a perfect match” “It has to be the right brand to fit” – packaged goods
Henry Ellis- head of social media at search conversion agency Tamar
“Its at the mercy of the social graph as well. If Paris Hiliton had launched an application like this it wouldn’t have worked because people don’t like her, but people like Mars”
Blake Chandlee- Facebook UK commercial director
If a brand picks up on a consumer advocacy group that’s targeting them early enough, they can manage that in a much better way.”
Mark Charkin- Bebo’s UK head of sales
“If brands stamp in and try to force sales, it wont work”
“Just because virtual gifts are a success doesn’t mean gifts in an offline environment will work.”
Stone -Microsoft to pay $240 million for stake in Facebook
Stone, Brad. “Microsoft to pay $240 million for Stake in Facebook.” The New York Times. October 25, 2007.
About: This newspaper article discusses the importance of Facebook as a new operating system to run targeted advertising. The author talks about the feud going on between Google, which owns the majority of the internet advertising rights, and Microsoft, who fears they might lose control of the next generation of computer users.
Audience: This article was probably written for people interested in investing into some of these internet companies (Google, Yahoo, Microsoft, Facebook, Myspace, The News Corporation)
Relevance: The relevance of this is that Microsoft was willing to pay a lot of money for a small part of this website because of fear of losing out on the market in the future.