• Dept. Of Advertising: Check Into Cheryl Cole Billboards With Facebook Places

    Monday, October 25th, 2010

    Erick Schonfeld is a technology journalist and the former Editor in Chief of TechCrunch. At TechCrunch, he oversaw the editorial content of the site, helped to program the Disrupt conferences and CrunchUps, produced TCTV shows, and wrote daily for the blog. He joined TechCrunch as Co-Editor in 2007, and helped take it from a popular blog to a thriving... → Learn More

    When Facebook launched Places in August, it encouraged advertisers to list their businesses in the Places directory. But now an advertiser is taking it one step further and asking passersby to check into a billboard using Facebook Places.

    In a new outdoor campaign across the UK for British singer Cheryl Cole, who has a new album coming out and a concert tour, fans who check into the billboard will be taken to her Facebook page and get a chance to win two free tickets (plus travel and hotel) to one of her X Factor shows. The campaign was designed by Mediacom and Polydor Records.

    I am not really sure a billboard counts as place, although I do suppose it is location-specific. But tying together check-ins with outdoor advertising like billboards and posters is something we will probably keep seeing. It is not the first time someone has this approach. A Nets billboard on the side of a building in New York City this summer, for instance, urged people to check in with Gowalla.

    It is not clear how successful these billboard check-in campaigns will be, however. It just seems more natural to offer promotions tied to actual places of business. But as the check-in concept expands from checking into a place to checking into brands, it could become more of a simple call to action.

    Company: Facebook
    Website: facebook.com
    Launch Date: February 1, 2004
    IPO: NASDAQ:FB

    Facebook is the world’s largest social network, with over 845 million monthly active users. Facebook was founded by Mark Zuckerberg in February 2004, initially as an exclusive network for Harvard students. It was a huge hit: in 2 weeks, half of the schools in the Boston area began demanding a Facebook network. Zuckerberg immediately recruited his friends Dustin Moskovitz, Chris Hughes, and Eduardo Saverin to help build Facebook, and within four months, Facebook added 30 more college networks. The original...

    Learn more

    Sponsored Ads

    blog comments powered by Disqus

    Sponsored Ads

    Sponsored Ads

    Upcoming Events

    Disrupt SF 2012

    San Francisco, CA