Many of the companies I worked with and for in the past approached incentivised marketing (giving away prizes) for one purpose: sales leads.
Gothere.sg, a Web 2.0 map startup in Singapore, is giving away an Apple iPhone 3G for… wait for it… noise. Yes marketeers, no call-to-action, no visiting the site, no registration, no send-to-a-friend gimmicks, no names, no emails, no leads! The young company, run by a bunch of 20-somethings, have opted for nothing more than you to mention “gothere.sg” on MSN, Google Talk, or Twitter.
The first thing that comes to mind is, what’s the ROI? The answer is: None. But think about this, their investment is merely a S$1,000 decive, and a little time to do up a nice page. What they get in return is brand equity, loyalty, and education which at this point is priceless for the startup. The site does not have any advertising, and they don’t sell any products directly to customers, but they have one huge problem. Singaporeans for many years have trusted StreetDirectory.com for all their online mapping needs.
Gothere.sg’s success does not rely on how well they sell a product, but on becoming the new defacto map service in Singapore. They need to become a household name, the first place locals will head when they need to directions. The best part is they know their product blows the competition clear away. In my view, it even beats Google Maps on most occations.
But why MSN, GTalk and Twitter? What’s wrong with a viral email campaign? I personally appreciate this approach not just because I favour the social media, but because it’s non-intrusive. While almost everyone I know has email, making it the “strongest” platform for any campaign; unsolicited email turns people off. Receiving unsolicited email is irritating to most and even hated by some. DM marketters know that the conversion rate for anything unsolicted is extremely low (less than 10%). This approach therefore creates about 90% of people hating you or finding you irriating. What Gothere.sg has done is totally passive which probably means they are informing the ignorant and creating fans, not pissing people off.
Although there’s not going to be immediate cash in their pockets, I applaud the folks at Gothere.sg for putting togethere a fantastic campaign. I’m sure if there’s a true way of measuring brand equity and loyalty, they’re already millionairs.
Here’s a quick snapshot of what the campaign has done on Twitter to date:
Filed under: Marketing, Singapore, Social Media
Ben, glad you wrote about this. I don’t really blog as much anymore so I’ll blog right in your comment section.
I think I’ve a different but disturbing take on the matter. While I’m all for amazing companies like GoThere.sg to find ways of getting more exposure, I am aware that some of us find these messages annoying.
While its a matter of taste, overly-commercial tweeting (or messaging on any platform) can deride the faith which our readers, followers, and friends have placed in us.
Some have argued that these tweetblasts come at a loss of the tweeter’s personal dignity and self-respect, at risk of being filtered, or worse, unfollowed and unsubscribed. The whole practice just reeks of the Pay-Per-Post debacle back when blogs were hot stuff.
For comparison, ArsTechnica wrote about a similar stunt in “MacHeist entices, annoys buyers with new TweetBlast”. They reminded us how MacHeist 3 bundle buyers could get Delicious Library and Multiwinia free for tweeting about MacHeist, but not everyone was so thrilled with the rash of MacHeist “tweet-spam.” See http://arstechnica.com/apple/news/2009/04/macheist-enticesannoys-buyers-with-new-tweetblast.ars
I’d suggest companies marketing via twitter (or any microblogs / IM) to do so carefully. It’s a precarious practice, as its easy for fans to promote OR demote one’s brand instantaneously via microblogging channels.
Either promote in a more subtle fashion (funny lolcat videos always work), or give awesome incentives that benefit BOTH senders and receivers of those messages (limited referral discounts, pro user accounts).
I hope these simple ideas make for a more pleasant twitter experience for all to enjoy. Let’s keep it tidy!
I completely agree with Kevin.
Some prominent bloggers like mrbrown have expressed their distaste with this campaign.
Others have pointed out that most of the tweets mentioning gothere.sg fail to disclose that the mention is at least partly in the hopes of winning the iphone – something that we have come to expect in a full-fledged blog post.
It’s good that gothere.sg is trying out creative ways to spread awareness of their excellent product, but they have to be really careful, especially when they use extrinsic motivators like prizes to drive this.
“In my view, it even beats Google Maps on most occasions.”
Well, I certainly hope so, considering their offering is a mashup which builds value-added functionality on top of the base Google Maps product.
But seriously, I am quite impressed by how far they have come over the past year that they have launched. I remember seeing them present at Unconference last year and thought that among all the startups that day, they (as well as HomeSpace) had the most polished product.
BTW, GoThere.sg doesn’t seem to be handling it’s sudden surge of popularity well. The site has been down tonight for quite a while already.
Thanks for your comments guys. I agree with Kevin and Coleman, that there are definitely those who take issue with the method. But in any marketing campaign, there will be people who don’t appreciate it. There’s no way an advertisement would appeal to everyone, and even unintended “marketing” such as a fan speaking excessively about a brand would result in some unhappiness from certain folks.
I have juxtaposed Gothere.sg’s to the common alternative which is EDMs to prove that there can be mass distribution with less annoyances.
@Jonathan: Thank you too for your comment. But if I’m not wrong, they don’t use Google Maps any more and have instead their own maps. I’m especially impressed by how quick they’ve introduced Street View. It’s not perfect, it for them to beat Google to the implementation says a lot.
It’s true that they are using their own (or is it LTA’s ?) vector and map data, but what I meant was that the map engine is still using the Google APIs.
I’m very impressed with their Street View – even though it’s sans the map overlay, IMO it’s every bit as useful as Google’s implementation.
However, I’m not all that surprised that they can implement this first for Singapore, since this is the market that they are focused on. And being an agile startup, they can certainly move a lot faster on priorities they focus on, versus a company the size of Google which will need to prioritize for markets across the whole world.
It’s not so much about some people not appreciating this campaign like “in any marketing campaign”.
The difference between the MacHeist and gothere.sg campaign is that the former has built-in disclosure, where you know that the tweeter is doing it for the freebie.
The gothere.sg campaign does not require the tweeter to disclose the motive of their tweet, and most do not.
Thus, the people who take issue with this have a very good reason to because of the ethical and credibility issues involved.
The only thing that is working in their favour is that they have a great product – the people tweeting probably genuinely love the product. There would have been a strong backlash if their product wasn’t good.