Ducati is charging into viral marketing in a change of strategy in how it traditionally reaches out to customers, reports MediaPost. The Italian maker of performance motorbikes is launching a campaign designed to entice people to find their perfect Ducati, then give them incentive to share the results through their social networking pages in places such as Facebook, Twitter and Linked-In.
The campaign, complete with a charming tagline It’s easy to fall in love with a beautiful Italian, is being run through social media marketer Peer2. Participants take a survey at Peer2.com that pairs them with their ideal Ducati bike. They are then given incentive to share the results and place a link to the survey in their social networks by rewarding them with points redeemable at Amazon for every click they get from friends.
According to Ducati’s U.S. sales and marketing director Jason Chinnock, the campaign is a move away from the company s traditional segment-oriented print advertising towards social media campaigns meant to promote Ducati as a lifestyle brand. Chinnock admits Ducati is spending the same amount in digital media as they have in print, only changing their strategy to target a broader set of people who might be interested in their products.
Peer2, or Peer Squared , recently launched its social media marketing service. Co-founder Joey Caroni told MediaPost that the site currently has about 2,000 members. Their web site promises a better approach to advertising through social media than traditional display ads, which many marketers agree are not effective on social networking sites. As in Ducati’s campaign, Peer2 pairs advertisers with social media users willing to promote products through their profile pages. By the sounds of it Peer2 should familiarize itself with recent changes to FTC rules governing product placement in social media, as reported in today s [a]list daily.
Read more at Media Post {link no longer active}.
