Facebook serves up new influence metric, with Heinz soup

We’re sticking with Facebook for today’s blog, because let’s face it, the company has barely been out of the headlines recently. Hot on the heels of a series of new product launches came yesterday’s news of a beefed up offer to advertisers.

The brand new ‘People Talking About This” metric will post recent user discussions about brands directly onto the brand’s Page. In a bid to shift advertisers’ focus away from click-through rates and towards social influence, Facebook wants to show marketers exactly which types of posts appeal to the most people.

Meanwhile, a new premium ad product will allow brands to deliver ads to users while showing which of their friends have already Liked the ad. It is a novel approach based on the unique relevance and context offered by social marketing – apparently adding a friend’s name, photo or endorsement to an ad makes people twice as likely to remember an ad’s message, and four times as likely to go on to purchase (source: Nielsen).

But the best Facebook story of the day was over at nma.co.uk, where it was reported that Heinz is enabling people to send personalised cans of soup to friends and loved ones. Again, this report demonstrates the potential to entice consumers to engage with brands via social media marketing in ways that simply wouldn’t be possible on traditional channels.

The campaign, entitled Get Well Soup, reportedly taps into our fondness for soup when struck down with illness – a well-timed push as end-of-summer colds strike across the nation.

Users can design and send customised cans directly from a new Facebook app. The quirky campaign is the latest in a series of novel Facebook marketing tactics from Heinz, including a social couponing campaign and an exclusive-to-Facebook product launch.