Brand Republic: Being a fan on facebook

Although I have been blogging before about how useful facebook can be for companies, i have found some research that is claiming the opposite. Brand Republic - a market-leading website for the online advertising, marketing, media and PR sectors - has recently done some street interviews in the UK asking people about their opinion and experience with fan sites on facebook.

These are the snapshots of the interviews:



According to this study people seem not to be really interested in becoming a fan of brands on facebook. These interviews were of course only made with a small group of selected people, so that one might argue that the results are not representative. Nevertheless, it seems to me that a majority of Facebook users (including me) don't see the benefit of becoming a fan of most of the brands on Facebook. This issue goes back to one of my previous postings about Victoria's Secret and Facebook. Facebook is only an effective marketing tool if the company finds a way to differentiate itself from its competitors on Facebook and clearly shows its customers the benefits of being their 'Facebook fan'.

But aren't companies dealing with the same issues in the offline marketing world too??! I think that with some creativity there are many ways to use Facebook to your advantage!