Andrew Girvan

Does Arts Marketing on Facebook Lack Innovation?

Facebook is the world’s most popular social network. In spite of the media’s current fixation with Twitter this study from the beginning of the year shows just how powerful Facebook’s numbers are: 350 million users is not to be sniffed at and something that Twitter, with a predicted user base of around 18 million, has quite a long way to match.

I personally would consider myself somewhat addicted to Facebook. Whenever I open a new browser window I find myself drawn to click the bookmark link that sits on my quick bookmarks bar. When I don’t open it straight away I have a copy of my news feed automatically show up on my iGoogle homepage and when I’m waiting for the bus its inevitably the Facebook and Twitter apps that I check whilst waiting for my lift into town.

Of the 600 or so friends I have on Facebook 400 of them are probably directly involved in the performing arts. I can’t guarantee you that number as its a rough estimation, based on how I have acquired Facebook friends over time. One thing I can say is that I know all but a handful of my Facebook friends personally. Each of them I have met either through my performing arts school (LIPA), the Edinburgh Fringe or other jobs, mainly in the arts. The few I don’t know personally tend to be internet personalities of one kind or another who should really be using fan pages but haven’t hit their 5000 friend barrier yet.

Having this number of Facebook friends who are directly involved in the arts gives a few interesting side effects to my online experience:

1. I tend to see a lot of opening night cast photos and show photos pop up in my news feed. Particularly with drama school productions, I can see the same cast gathered around onstage or in the dressing rooms shot multiple times from slightly different angles as everyone gets their chance to capture the moment for prosperity on their own cameras. Sometimes good quality production photos will turn up later, again adding to the prosperity value (rather than the marketing value), digitally archiving (possibly in breach of the licensing conditions) the production.

2. A lot of my Facebook friends have black and white headshots as their profile pictures. As I mentioned in my post about how artists can use social media to their advantage, one of the best uses of a headshot you are proud of is being able to consistently brand social networking pages. Those you are using to promote your personal brand can be kept professional and, hopefully, find work.

3. On a regular basis I am invited to become Facebook Fans of performers and companies that I know. In addition to having the opportunity to advertise my allegiance to big named stars, my friends ask me to support them online. In addition I am often targeted to join groups for theatre companies and venues, opening me up to barrages of messages directed at all group members advertising events and happenings. Which bring me on nicely to my last point…

4. I am invited to a huge number of Facebook Events. Not for people’s birthday parties or celebratory trips to the pub, but for live music gigs, comedy nights and theatre performances on one kind or another. Nearly every time I log on to Facebook there is an event invite waiting for me. I am now so desensitised to what I am being invited to that I almost always just click that I will maybe attend and forget about it. I rarely decline invites unless its geographically impossible for me to attend or I know I won’t hurt anyone’s feelings.

Its mainly the last two point above that I want to tackle with this post. Where is the innovation in how we advertise performing arts on Facebook?

I know myself that in promoting an event through Facebook the natural course of action seems to be to create a Facebook Event page; invite all your friends with little or no filtering, hoping that each of them will be so excited about your event that they will invite their friends; and wait with baited breath to see how many people click that they will be there at the event.

Of course, the number of people who say they will attend doesn’t bear any resemblance to the actual number who will turn up. Some who know that they can’t be there might take the time to leave you a comment explaining they will be on the wrong side of the world to enjoy your shindig, but they will inevitably click that they won’t be attending. I suspect most of your Facebook friends will simply click “maybe” and then forget about it.

Is it a failing of Facebook that so many people are using the same basic tools over and over again, trying to achieve a successful internet marketing campaign and at the same time devaluing the tools they are using? Are there smarter, cheekier, more interesting things that we as Facebook users should be doing to attract an audience using the world’s biggest social network? Is Facebook doomed to become the equivalent to the trusty poster or billboard in arts marketing, something that you notice when its right in front of you but never seems to make much of a lasting impression? Social media is meant to be about engagement and interaction, are marketers still able to achieve this by using Facebook?

It had been a long since I’d seen any kind of advertising, user generated or paid-for, on Facebook that made me think “wow” or really give any kind of impression at all. That was until I saw a Mashable article including the video I have posted below.

Swedish digital agency Forsman & Bodensfors set up a Facebook account for the store manager of a new branch of flat-packed-heaven Ikea which was opening in Sweden. The really clever bit was also starting a competition where the first person to tag themselves in photos of Ikea showrooms won you the tagged item. If you saw a bed in the pictures they posted on Facebook, and were the first to tag yourself as the bed, you won the bed!

The really clever aspect to the campaign was that if you went to see photos of your friend, somewhere in their photo collection, their news feed and probably yours, they were advertising Ikea products, at no cost to Ikea. The viral nature of the campaign was baked into the means of entering. The networked nature of Facebook not only promote and self perpetuate the competition but also spread the Ikea brand further on more pages, integrated further into people’s personal web activity than any paid-for marketing could ever achieve.

What examples have you seen of companies getting it right on Facebook? Where is the arts marketing best practice hiding? Following my 129 Theatre People to Follow on Twitter I know I have a few theatre Marketing and Communication departments following me. I’m really interested in your feedback, so tweet it or leave it in the comment section below.

Photo credit: Glaudo on Flickr