Week 6- Article: "Advertisers Face Hurdles on Social Networking Sites," The New York Times, December 14, 2008

This article gives a very depressing look at the success of brands to penetrate Facebook and other social networking sites.  It gives examples of P&G who has a been trying to successfully utilize Facebook for a couple of years now, but has not been able to achieve large success.  In all the examples, a heavily branded Facebook page was created to draw in visitors and "friends" of the page.  But, very few people came to the sites and even fewer agreed to befriend the brand.  Sadly these branded Facebook pages still had greater success than the banner ads, which appeared on regular Facebook pages, because these brand ads were deemed non-credible or downright ignored.

I definitely see the point the article was trying to make and think it can be very hard to penetrate social network sites that people use to make personal connections with their friends and family.  When people are on these sites, they are engaging in very personal interactions and could feel that advertising is just invading this personal space.  But I also think the examples of implementation these ads on Facebook was poor.  People are trying to make deep personal connections when on Facebook and they do have some brands that have special meaning to them.  People also have certain activities that they see as personal.  If brands could do a better job determining how consumers interpret their brand or its purpose on a personal level, they would have a much better chance of interacting with consumers on Facebook.  Maybe P&G, which offers many consumer products that fulfill an array of consumer needs should focus more on building a less branded ommunity on Facebook that encourages people to chat about some of their favorite or odd personal daily experiences and then find a way to promote their products that would enrich these experiences.  For example, people spill stuff on their clothes all the time and often post interesting statuses about these embarrassing moments.  P&G could post statuses that highlight its Tide-To-Go pen which can remove stains on the fly or give tips on how to remove really bad stains with Tide products.  But again, it would have be offered more as a suggestion to help people's day to day issues rather than just random advertising to promote the brand.

Social networking sites are definitely tough marketing propositions, but they can used effectively if implemented well.