With an upcoming release of the 4th installment of Terminator movie franchise, Terminator Salvation is stepping up its online viral campaign. Terminator Salvation infiltrates a number of online properties and deploys various web marketing tactics to spread the word, promote and generate buzz about the upcoming movie which lands in theatres starting May 22, 2009.
Official Warner Bros. Terminator Salvation Website has information about the film, latest trailers, desktop wallpapers, photo galleries and more. Tribute.ca has also created its own version of Warner Bros. site. Official Sony Pictures Terminator Salvation Website contains similar content and links as Warner Bros. site, except Sony site looks and feel much different. Terminator fans can also play Terminator Salvation Game online against other human fans. Choose a side (Resistence or Skynet) and eliminate your opponents.
Skynet Research is a viral marketing website. The ‘official’ website of fictional company that originally developed robotics technology to improve the lives of humans but in the future it becomes self-aware and wages war on humans with its army of Terminators. The goal of this site is to engage Terminator fans by way of user generated content. Fans can submit their robot designs and videos. Skynet Research also has a Facebook Fan page. Another component of the viral campaign is anti-skynet movement located at resistorbeterminated.com Fans can join the resistence here, engage in community forums and learn tactics.
Terminateyourself.com is another viral marketing website. On this site users can submit pictures (mug shots) of themselves; then images can be altered to look like damaged Terminators. Users can share the results with friends or use the picture as a profile image on social networks.
Terminator Salvation is also present on popular social networks. On Flickr, Skynet Research account showcases user generated robot designs submitted to Skynet. Youtube also showcases user generated videos submitted to Skynet Research. Show your love for the movie by becoming an official fan on Facebook Terminator Salvation page. And finally, fans can follow Terminator Salvation on Twitter.
While job hunting through the latter part of ‘08 and some of ‘09, I came across this article: Use Facebook Ads to Make Employers Hunt You Down. A good friend of mine and a fellow blogger Andrew Kinnear sent it to me via StumbleUpon. After reading it and studying each case I decided to launch my own experiment. In addition to using the Facebook ads as an avenue for employers to hunt me down, I also wanted to find networking opportunities.
Using the techniques and strategy described in the article I ran two Facebook ads. I hyperlinked the ads to a page on my site that clearly spelt out what I was trying to achieve with my Facebook ad experiment. In the copy I thanked the visitor for clicking on my ad, provided a very brief description of who I am and what type of work I was looking for. Also, I provided a link to my LinkedIn profile. As a call to action, I asked the visitor to provide me with a lead to a job opening or a simple networking opportunity with someone at their organization by filling out a contact form.
Facebook Ads allows you to specifically target a group of people that you intend your message to reach. I decided to target Facebook members that are employed by one of the companies that I always wanted to work for. Below are examples of ads I ran and the results. Each ad ran for a week.
As you can see, Ad01 produced better results (CTR%) than Ad02. My friend Andrew Kinnear hypothesized that audience was more drawn to my casual profile than a corporate look because they identified it as being more realistic and authentic; whereas the corporate look in Ad02 looks like a stock photo.
(Fill the black spaces with the company name of your choice.)
Also, when I ran a second Facebook Ads experiment targeting a number of organizations in the same industry with a generic message, the response and results were not impressive at all. As you can see below the CTR% was only .23, even with low impressions.
I was extremely surprised with the results (from Ad01 and Ad02). I received a handful of emails, some of which led to introductions to a recruiter, other people in the organization, and having my resume passed around within.
Some of the folks that helped me out I’ve connected with on LinkedIn and still stay in touch with them today. Although I did not find work with my target company, I was able to use this experiment as an interesting topic of conversation during my hiring interviews and networking meetings. I was even called into an interview because the hiring manager was extremely interested in hearing about my job hunt tactitcs. What made the experiment a success was (a) targeting the right demographic, (b) creating a targeted message, (c) genuine appeal for help, and (d) authenticity. At the end of the day I was able to find work at another great company that I admire for innovation, great business sense, and people centric culture.
