We All Scream for Ice Cream

I like how Facebook helped extend Ben and Jerry's brand awareness. They were able to use the power of a brand and a social network to make a media campaign connected. While TV spots give visibility and Google Ads extend that with a link for the consumer, Facebook is able to engage the user with the brand.

"Our users tell a lot about themselves, that gives us the opportunity" to work with advertisers, she said. One successful example of this, she said, was a promotion by Ben & Jerry's that resulted in 500,000 Facebook users giving each other free ice cream cones within 11 hours. That day, the Ben & Jerry's Web site picked up 53 million impressions, as people searched for store locations and wrote about their favorite flavors, she said.

I wonder if we could push further on this and allow the social interaction to be more open to other websites and applications . A similar experience could have been offered from Ben and Jerry's website. Maybe I should be able to share an Ice Cream directly from their store locator view. The second expansion would be to enable this feature through any application. There are 20,000 applications at Facebook, enabling them to participate in the social campaign might just further the engagement and virality.

If the application was deployed at Ben and Jerry's ,depicted to the right, then the interaction might have the opportunity to be further reaching. Another possible advantage is the campaign could be re-run on other social networks and other websites tailored for specific communities.

I think it is further expansion of applications into many web sites, communities and social networks which will further drive the idea of an open social web.

Rich @ Ringside