Phil Bilbrough: Yummy mummies and milky daddies

How do you advertise on social networking sites? It is a struggle. You are a thirsty stranded marketer and over the desert horizon a shimmer of a vast network appears to quench your parched sand-dried throat. Between you and that cool cool feeling of success, is the "What is this again?", the "How do I do it?", the "You have to guarantee it will work", and the "I don't want to risk my brand" are the points that keep that social network mirage hanging over the horizon.

So you could pay me to squirt a social network campaign down your throat, or you could follow this example, the Hot Milk Lingerie people have it sussed.

Think what you like about me, its probably all true. Hot Milk Lingerie is on Facebook and look to be doing well. Ad agencies will be shitting themselves.

And I met them on Facebook. One of my friends had become a fan of "Breasts" and when she did that, all her friends got notified that she was a fan. There is no hiding and no shame. I couldn't resist - yeah go ahead and judge me. So I checked out Breasts and got taken to Breastmates.

So I was both disappointed and impressed. These Breastmates know the web and how to market. They used an existing social network (this is me foreshadowing the next blog topic) to talk about themselves, breasts, their fans, their fans' breasts, they then fitted up some offers, and cupped together a (late nite competition) to keep them snug.

This is what you do. The mates have pretty much done it. I'm sure that they are causing a few nipples out in the social network pond.

This isn't for every brand. Talking about lingerie is sexy and fun. Talking about life assurance or income protection on Facebook isn't fun. Facebook is a SOCIAL network, it isn't a BORE ME INTO THE GROUND network. There is escapism here. It's online pub-talk.

There are networks that discuss important world changing issues, my friends at the Bioethics Council won world recognition for their deliberative social network site. Yet the Bioethics network and others like it aren't in the Facebook, Bebo, MySpace, and Twitter league.

The Facebooks of this world have 10s of millions of people and those people maintain and develop their own entertainment and stay engaged. This is their potential and this is what marketers get off on. Just not many know how to climax.

Phil Bilbrough is a freelance online advertising specialist who has recently begun blogging on the subject for Scoop at Advertising.scoop.co.nz. He can be contacted at phil@bilbrough.com.

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