Facebook Brand Advertisement from College to Professional Networking

¶ … brand (Facebook) been advertised/Publicized in the past?

Facebook has primarily targeted college students, branding itself as a really cool social networking site (Marketing to a new generation). In fact, the company once required an official college email address to be eligible for membership. It has relied mainly on viral marketing, marketing techniques that use pre-existing social networks to produce increases in brand awareness, through self-replicating viral processes (Viral marketing key to Facebooks' success). Students are offered the ability to connect with friends, share photos, and swap music tips. While on the site, they consume ads from Generation Y brands such as Apple, Jeep and Red Bull (Ricadela, 2007) b- How is your brand (Facebook) being advertised now? (current campaigns)

Facebook has a new vision that includes spanning from just a social networking site to a professional networking site. The company wants to build a much larger base of users and is targeting both younger users as well as older professionals in addition to its traditional base of college students.

The company's initial efforts have been focused on older users, defined as professionals in their 30s and 40s (Ricadela, 2007). It has begun with the more technology savvy audiences in the high technology industry. To attract new users, it has created networks for large companies such as Ernst & Young and Citigroup, each having gained thousands of members.

Facebook is supplementing generation Y ads with high-technology ads (Ricadela, 2007). Most of Facebook's revenue now comes from Microsoft's banner ads. The company is also directly selling more interactive campaigns such as profiles and stories that appear in a user's news feed. These include things such as Hewlett-Packard computers and PNC Bank financial services.

Facebook is also transforming itself into a platform for new applications to attract a broader audience (Vogelstein, 2007). It has more than 3,200 new applications on its site. The strategy is to organize literally everything on the Internet. Applications enhance Facebook as a social hub, but also as professional hub serving recruiters, manager and colleagues seeking to hire and promote job candidates. It also tracks consumer tastes to help vendors better target their products and services.

A c-have these campaigns been successful or unsuccessful?

Facebook's campaigns are very successful. Total registrations in 2007 quadrupled over those in 2006 (Vogelstein, 2007). In June 2007, 11.5 million of Facebook visitors were 35 or older, more than double the number a year before (Ricadela, 2007). Also, according to Ricadela, this age group now accounts for more than 41% of all Facebook visitors.