If only every store took social media posts for payment, a girl can dream. I came across this article on Mashable about a Marc Jacobs pop-up shop taking Instagram/Facebook posts and tweets in exchange for products. How cool is that?! The store is using customer’s social media posts as a sort of “social currency.” They receive gifts just for putting the hashtag #MJDaisyChain in their posts. Do you guys think this is an effective promotional tool, using social media as a “currency”? Even though they’re not profiting in revenue, they are generating a massive presence on the internet, enhancing their brand’s reputation. Do you think other brands and companies would emulate their strategy? If social media posts were a form of currency, how would you even measure the cost of each post?
I would definitely like to give it a try. It’s a very interesting and unique idea. However, whether or not it will be successful is hard to say since, like you said, it is not generating revenue. Only time will tell. I believe other companies will follow suit because it is a very competitive market.
I definitely believe that this is a very innovative idea. Every brand has promotions but this definitely takes the cake. Social media as currency for samples of their products is just genius! They’re already going to give out samples somewhere, but making it an exchange for promotion is going out of the box. Other companies will definitely follow on in this social media as cash currency for better promotion. Promotion is revenue in this case. Just imagine, if they were already giving out free samples somewhere but there was no guaranteed promotion for them, how much are they losing comparing to if they do it as an exchange? Especially since hash tags seem to be all the rage on many popular social media outlets.
This is a very unique and interesting concept. Currently, website posts and hashtags are used frequently for advertising/promotional purposes. I am not sure how successful it has been in the companies’ stand point, but I did become more aware of certain brand names. I understand and foresee the concept of using consumer’s posts and hashtags as a part of a loyalty program (similar to those of the Starbucks card which gives you a free drink after your 12th purchase). The number of loyalty points that may be obtained and exchanged for merchandises may be depended on the number of views you received on the posts.
However, the idea of it being a “social media currency” is a bit farfetched for me. How would one obtain this “currency”? If it’s through the method I proposed before, then there would be a disparity between the rich and the poor. Think of how many views/likes an average person receives from their Twitter/Facebook post. How about someone like Beyonce? Obama? Bill Gates? Additionally, there is going to be valuation issues in an economics perspective (which I will not discuss).
Overall, I believe this concept is very interesting and is something retailers should consider for their loyalty program!
Wow! I think that’s one of the coolest and most innovative ideas that I’ve read/came across in a WHILE. Obviously there would have to be a lot of issues tackled (ie. how many people can pay with social currency at a given time, or for a given item, and how to regulate it in conjunction with actual currency), each varying with every specific store, but the concept itself I think is very innovating and can virtually generate an unbelievably tremendous amount of marketing for each company that adopts it in an effective way. I mean once the breakeven point is well surpassed each month, why NOT offer social media marketing as a kind of currency for low profit-margin items or store credit? The demand, in my opinion, would skyrocket. And absolutely, if implemented correctly, I believe many other companies will try to emulate the strategy (but could hypothetically only be effective if they tailor it to their benefit, ie. McDonald’s system would have to be different than Marc Jacobs’, obviously). And I think the measurement would have to be something like a customer cap on the merchandise paid with social media, like ‘1st 100 customers to come to the store on said day, who hashtagged #MJDaisyChain on one of their posts from at least a day before gets $30 in store credit,’ or something like that. But whatever way it works out, if it does work out, it would be a big hit with not only consumers, but companies trying to imitate this strategy as well.