Want to be Friends on Facebook?

I never usually 'connect with Facebook'. I just don't like letting everything access my everything, but for some reason (probably who posted it originally) I thought that I'd make an exception for this. I'm glad I did - it's pretty damn cool.

Once connected with Facebook, the film begins. You're watching 3 teenage girls, each in their own home, discussing, basically, how hot and amazing you are. Two of them are totally normal lovesick teenagers. The other, well, let's just say you wouldn't want to meet her in a dark alley. But apparently, you did.

Notruf Deutschland is a German TV show, a kind of real life crime solving thing (from what I can make out), and this Facebook app certainly gives the chills they're looking for.

After seeing 'myself' in a sack on the floor of a room, walls adorned with my photos and what I presume to be my blood, I thought that was it. Pretty cool. 

Then I got an email with a link to my video in it, and a link to the Facebook app.

Fair enough - they have my info. After I saw this, I deleted the app (I hate a messy Facebook). 

About 3 hours later, I received a friend request. From Emily Borowczyk. Who the hell is Emily Borowczyk? It wasn't until I looked at the friend request on Facebook that I realised who it was...

It was my captor, friending me on Facebook. 

Freaky. 

I wonder how long this will go on before Facebook has an issue with it? Maybe they won't, who knows. I for one love this. It's taking the usual campaign one step further, and really touching the user. I must admit that even though I smiled once I knew who she was and what it was, I must admit at first, I felt a little chill.

Maybe I'm just easy.

KiMs Chips - why the silence

A long time ago I opened a packet of KiMs crisps I had bought on the train only to find about 10 crisps in my bag. One was most unamused. Surely this must be a mistake I thought? It got under my skin, and as soon as I was home I jumped on Facebook to see if KiMs had a page. They didn't, which I thought was pretty weird, but what I did find was the page called 'Vi er pisse trætte af at Kims chips aldrig er fyldt helt op!', which means 'Us who are sick and tried of KiMs crisps never being full!'. So I joined, and posted my photo. I was definitely not the only one who felt a bit ripped off.

I tried emailing KiMs to say that this surely must be a mistake, but received no answer. Not surprisingly. I'd like to just point out that only once have I emailed a company due to a product I was not satisfied with, and received a box full as a sorry (I was 14 and my Sherbert Dip Dab didn't have a lolly in it).

A few months later (approximately) KiMs suddenly arrived on Facebook with a big competition. Their fanbase grew quickly (not surprisingly given that they're the Walkers of Denmark), but not as quickly as the other page. Currently, the official page has 25,026 fans, and the 'unofficial' page 28,946. People entered the competition, and somebody won, but the other KiMs group was never addressed.

KiMs then launched the 'Kald det Jørgen' ('Call it Jørgen' - Jørgen is the character used in all the advertisements) campaign, where people were encouraged to rename other products 'Jørgen'. Jørgenneven got his own Facebook page, which is now dedicated to finding Denmark's largest crisp after the original campaign ran into understandable trouble. 

Last week, a post popped up in my feed, which read, "Alle sammen, gå ind på "KiMs Chips" og skriv "Fyld poserne op" på deres væg, og tag denne gruppe i opslaget :)" (Everyone, go on to KiMs Chips and write 'fill up the bags' on their wall, and tage this group in your post :)). I decided to check it out to see how many would actually do this. So far, about...well, there's been a lot. Sure, not thousands, but enough to totally swamp the wall (click for full-size).

As I scrolled down, I came across this photo from the newspaper Søndsagsavisen (Sunday's Paper). The headline reads 'You're paying for air.'

It is now painfully obvious that the KiMs Facebook page was made for the competition - their activity has been pretty much zero since the competition was won (save for a couple of focus group member pleas), making the dormant page a perfect location for spam. And they got it. Although this isn't just random spam, it's frustrated posts from consumers who demand an answer - or indeed - any response. 

So far, KiMs have been silent. 

Why create a new page for Jørgen instead of using the KiMs page? Why leave that page dead? Why the silence in regards to both the newspaper article and the spam from the 'unofficial' group? 

It might not be the largest social media crisis, but it's one that should be addressed. Come on KiMs! How hard can it be? Perhaps there's a reason for all the air that we don't know about? Perhaps there's a weight limit? A crisp limit? There must be some reason behind all the air, because surely, surely you're not just doing it on purpose...

Update

It's been brought to my attention that one user received an answer from KiMs after a couple of emails. The user then posted the answer on the wall;

"Tak for din henvendelse. Hvor meget vores chips fylder i poserne afhænger af hvor meget tørstof der er i kartoflerne, som igen er afhængigt af hvor på sæsonen vi er. Når der er meget tørstof i kartoflerne er massefylden større, hvorfor der er færre chips i posen for at ramme den angivne gramvægt. Desuden skal der være lidt vægt i posen for at beskytte dem under transport."

("Thank you for your inquiry. How much our chips fills the bags depends on how much dry matter there is in the potatoes, which in turn depends on the season we are in. When it's very dry, the potatoes have a larger density, so fewer crisps are needed to hit the specified gram weight. Furthermore, there must be some weight in the bag to protect them during transport.")

Still seems like a lot of (hot) air to me, but the real problem remains the same - lack of communication and a failure to address the issue.

Update Two

KiMs has come back with an answer. Sort of. On their own wall. Here it is.

(Why is there so much air in the bags? It is important that there is a certain amount of air in the bags as air protects the crisps from breaking. But there is too much air and too few crisps? We understand if some of you feel there is more air in the bags than before. A couple of years ago we began to fry the chips in sunflower oil instead of palm oil. We did this because we always want to improve the products and sunflower oil contains less saturated fat than palm oil. Sunflower oil is significantly more expensive than palm oil. We were therefore faced with a choice between raising the price or reducing weight by 25 grams. We chose the latter. Our main goal is to be Denmark's favorite brand of crisps, and therefore it is important for us to emphasize that we in no way want to cheat anyone. Therefore we always listen to criticism and assesses the content and size of our bags. Sincerely, KiMs.")

Fair enough. It's good to get a response. Interesting to see they didn't mention the environmental benefits of not using palm oil considering KitKat's slight brush with Greenpeace, but, that's neither here nor there. 

Although if they do always listen, they should really post it on the other page as well, or at least tag it.

Saturated Social

Another article for The Danish Communication Association. This time, a questionning one - would love to have comments.

I’ve been talking to my friends at work recently about when Facebook arrived and how we adjusted to it. I for one was (very amusingly) not convinced. I was active on MySpace (as it was called then), and loved the customisation it offered. Facebook, in my eyes, was a dull, generic platform, and anyway – I didn’t know anyone on it.

Oh dear.

Today, as we all know, Facebook has seen the death of multiple other social platforms, and has evolved into the massive network it is now, with over 500,000,000 active members, not to mention an Oscar winning film made about it.

Impressive, or overwhelming?

The same can be said of YouTube and other networks; they’re huge and they’re pretty much saturated. Try finding the genuine ‘official music video of XXX’ and you’ll be gone for days. Facebook a brand (it’s even a verb!) and chances are you’ll be offered community pages, places, groups, fan pages – both official and actual ‘fan’ fan pages – links, posts, photos – the lot. Viral videos aren’t what they used to be – one pops up every minute, from sneezing baby pandas, to people loving cats a little too much – it’s hard to put something online with impact that lasts for more than a day. It’s definitely safe to say that social media are integrated in to our daily lives, our daily routines, our personal habits, our shopping habits and our learning habits. Would it be too wrong to say that it’s about time they moved from being called ‘new’ media, to just other media?

Often, it’s all a little too much. Of course, we don’t have to ‘like’ brands, companies or people, but if we want to stay up to date with, well, everything, or if we want that special Facebook/Twitter/Foursquare deal, then you’d better like, check in, follow or become the mayor. I can’t help but wonder how far we are away from becoming sick and tired of all the social media marketing we have to put up with. We’re already familiar with the various quotes about how many advertisements we’re bombarded with daily in terms of TV, radio and outdoor – how many do social media contribute towards this today? With sponsored tweets (when a company pays to have it’s tweets show up first when it is searched for on Twitter – aka. adverts), Facebook ads, YouTube ads, blogs with ads – it’s overwhelming.

This combination of constant – and in this day and age, I really do mean constant – bombardment of adverts, and with such a large amount of brands and companies active on social media, is really taking the ‘new’ out of new media, and making it, in my opinion, exactly the same as any other media. It’s exhausting.

I’m pretty sure this wasn’t the reaction I was supposed to have after watching the video below, but all I could think was, ‘but for how long?’

Encouraging or oppressive?

Sure, you might hear that companies heavily engaged with social media marketing make more profit, revenue and bring in more customers than those who neglect it, but how long is that going to last? To quote Groove Armada, if everybody looked the same, we’d get tired of looking at each other. When every brand and business are tweeting, Facebooking, Foursquaring and everything-else-ing – what then? As with TV, we’ll see the odd ingenious marketing effort popping through, but the vast majority? Yawn.

Don’t get me wrong – I’m more than aware of the need to be on social media, and we’re a long way off seeing every brand and company active, and of course there is also a vast difference between simply communicating and marketing.  Yet social media are what websites were in the 90s. If you’re not there, you might as well not exist. I firmly believe that brands and companies should be on social media – those that aren’t today most definitely should be. Their entire present and future customer base are probably active there, so they should be too, and it’s precisely in that point that the quandary lies. You have to be on social media – everyone is. So how do you stand out? Sound familiar? TV and radio ring a bell? Back to square one.

This post might seem a bit rambling, and I apologise if it does, but it’s something that has been on my mind for sometime, and I’m eager to see what other people think. I don’t mean to imply that social media marketing has had its day, just that it will, and that I don’t think that day is all that far away.

What do you think?