Impulse on FacebookCase study of a Facebook campaign

IntroductionThis case study examines a Facebook application being run by Impulse (Unilever anti-perspirant brand for females 18-25) to support their new fragrances, True Love and Romantic Spark. You can access the page here: http://www.facebook.com/impulsediariesThe Impulse app invites you to submit a story about a romantic moment. Others users can then vote on your story. There are two incentives in place: firstly, story submitters who receive the highest number of votes will win backstage passes to an exclusive live gig with The Saturdays. Secondly, people who vote on a story are entered into a sweepstake to win tickets to the same gig.The app leverages Facebook’s friends network (and hence creates a viral effect) through two key actions:If you submit a story, you can opt to have the story link posted to your wall (and thus to your friends’ newsfeeds). It is in your interest to opt in to this as it will increase your chances of winning as your friends are likely to vote for your story.If you vote for someone’s story, you can also opt-in to have this event posted to your wall and your friends’ newsfeeds. In this case, there is no incentive to opt in as this does not increase your chances in the sweepstake.The app went live on 25th October. By 31st October there had been 168 stories submitted and the top 20 stories in the leaderboard had received 1617 votes. According to the app profile info, there 6,629 active users of the app. It’s important to note that the numbers here do not reflect the brand awareness created by having the brand name simply appear on the networks of the users who participated i.e. assuming each user has 120 facebook friends (this is the average number of friends a typical FB user has), the votes cast for the top 20 stories will have appeared on 194,040 people’s newsfeeds (providing they opted in to having their vote published to their wall)NB – this Facebook campaign was NOT created by Content Formula. It is merely a good example that caught our eye due to its rich and effective integration with Facebook.

Welcome page

HomepageNote Impulse branding including logo, pics, colours, font and page background

Submit your storyIn order to submit, you have to “install” the app on your FB account.

After submitting story, I can post this message to my wall and invite my friends to vote for my storyEven though I can skip this step, it is in my best interests to publish to my wall as my friends will then be aware of my story will hopefully vote for me!

My wall after submitting my story

My story is live straight away without any moderation

When I vote for someone else’s story, it gets posted to my wall.The branding here is very subtle. It may have made more sense to tone up the graphical branding by using a bigger logo or a pic of the product. However, it’s possible that Impulse chose not to oversell their brand and hence turn off the target audience.

I also get the opportunity to invite friends to the gig (if I win)I can select from my friends on FB or I can enter their email addresses. This action will send a message to my selected friends telling them that I have chosen them.

This is the invite my friends will receive

Impulse Wall

Impulse Diaries tabThis features content about the band The Saturdays including video, pics and a Twitter feed.

Info page

Contact usDan Hawtrey+44 (0) 207 381 6671dhawtrey@contentformula.comwww.contentformula.comhttp://www.twitter.com/contentformula