Potato Chips and Flickr — A Happy New Social Media Marketing Tactic

Flickr is the most popular online photo sharing site, but it has yet to be fully leveraged for social media marketing.  The reason lies in part due to the restrictions of use that the site has in place to ensure that everyone who spends time there is uploading valid images that add to the community rather than detract from it.  PepsiCo’s snack food division, Frito-Lay, is trying to find the secret to marketing via Flickr with its new “The Happiness Exhibit” campaign.  Check out the Web site here and the Flickr group here.

Consumers are being asked to upload photos of themselves, friends and family to Flickr (or to Flickr from Facebook) while enjoying happy moments in life.  Some of the images will appear in People magazine and on Lay’s product packages later this year.  The campaign integrates well with Lay’s “Happiness is Simple” initiative that has played out in advertising and marketing over the past year.  The new digital component of the initiative on Flickr will be promoted with ads on Hulu, iVillage, Yahoo! and YouTube as well as on some Lay’s product packages.

This particular campaign has a big budget push behind it, and partnerships have been made between Frito-Lay, Flickr, and Yahoo! to make it happen.  The campaign was announced by press release on March 15, 2010, and by March 16, 2010, nearly 6,000 images had already been uploaded demonstrating that people like the idea of sharing photos without a lot of encouragement.  It certainly helps that a lot of people already have Flickr accounts, but the point is that people love to share content they’re proud of, and photos are included.

How can you leverage photo or content sharing to market your brand?  It’s something people clearly like to do?  Can you create a campaign around sharing — an activity that your customers are already doing?  It’s quite an opportunity.

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Susan Gunelius

President & CEO at KeySplash Creative, Inc.

Susan Gunelius is the author of multiple marketing, social media, branding, copywriting, and blogging books, and she is President & CEO of KeySplash Creative, Inc., a marketing communications company. She also owns Women on Business, a leading blog for business women. She is a featured columnist for Entrepreneur.com, a featured writer for Forbes.com, and the Guide to Blogging for About.com. Additionally, her marketing-related articles have appeared on websites such as MSNBC.com, FoxBusiness.com, WashingtonPost.com, TheStreet.com, SmartMoney.com, TodayShow.com, BusinessWeek.com, Yahoo! Finance, Yahoo! Small Business, and more. She has nearly 20 years of experience in the marketing field having spent the first decade of her career directing marketing programs for some of the largest companies in the world, including divisions of AT&T and HSBC. Susan also appears at in-person and virtual events where she speaks about marketing, branding, social media, and more (visit www.SusanGunelius.com for more information). You can connect with her on Twitter, Facebook or LinkedIn.

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