So @Ev pointed out that Microsoft Australia was doing a marketing campaign where the buried 10K (Aussie dollars I think, but the site doesn’t specify) somewhere and have launched a social media blitz to get people to use… wait for it… wait… Internet Explorer 8!
I have three major gripes with this campaign:
1- Burying 10K has nothing to do with the browser, it might have something to do with search, so why not use this campaign to promote Bing, Microsoft’s newish Search engine? Why not get users to search using Bing to find the 10K?
2 – IE8 is not one of the best browsers on the market (let me count them off in no particular order Firefox, Chrome, Safari, and Opera are all better in my opinion) so as Gary Gale replied to me yesterday “Theyd’ have to pay me a whole lot more than that to use IE8.”. This goes back to my post on T-Mobile, at least have a comparable product, play in the same ball park, before you spend marketing dollars promoting a lesser product.
3 – The execution of the campaign is terrible, the twitter account isn’t following anyone (at least follow some of the Microsoft execs or some celebrities or something). Apparently the destination is a web page, so users can probably find the page without actually using the product, so you mean I can follow the clues on twitter, add myself as a fan on facebook, add it to digg and delicious and find the page on, oh I don’t know, Chrome or Firefox or Opera and still walk away with the 10K? This goes back to my first point at least do the campaign in a way that ensures people are using the product.
Bonus gripe – By using Twitter and delicious they’re obviously going after the younger, more social software aware, tech savvy crowd, as my mom doesn’t know her twitter from her delicious from her facebook from her digg etc, this crowd will want a good product. If they’re not going after this segment this makes even less sense as the less tech savvy, less social web using segment is most likely already using IE8, just using it to go to Google first to do their searches.
Don’t get me wrong, I like socially driven marketing campaigns, I think using social media to promote a product is a good idea and more companies should do this. But invest in the product so you’re at least a solid alternative first and make sure the campaign is being used in a way that’s relevant to the product.
