En route to Poynter’s Scandivanian Sommerskole to teach a session on “Getting the News to the People Where They Are,” I saw this piece by Jon Swartz in USA Today about the use of social networking/marketing by advertisers.
It was especially interesting to see this explanation of the Levi Strauss social media strategy from the company’s digital marketing director: “It was an easy call. This is where our customers are.”
Swartz tracks what Levi’s, Ford Motor Co., and other firms are doing to market their products with social media sites and tools.
Discussing Ford’s marketing of its Fiesta, Swartz writes:
I’m not sure I found any of those 100 in a quick search of YouTube, but this mostly rave review of the car suggests the buzz potential of Ford’s approach. (If you track down some of the 100, please add to Feedback below so we can track some of what’s resulting from Ford’s program.)
All of which leaves me with a bunch of questions to ponder on my trans-Atlantic flight today, including:
- If advertisers are getting good results from this kind of grass-roots, inexpensive social marketing, how can the advertising staffs of news organizations help them get even better results and, in the process, avoid more disintermediation?
- What lessons do these social media advertising initiatives hold for journalists interested in getting their news to the people where they are?
