4 Things to Expect from Cause Campaigns on Facebook Lesson #1 – Rapid Change

[box]This post is the first in a series about cause marketing on Facebook, taken from our new whitepaper:  Cause Marketing on Facebook:  Truths, Tips and Trends from Pioneers.  You may download the Executive Summary of this report for free or purchase the report and corresponding November 15^th webinar for $99.[/box] When working with Facebook, get ready for constant change.  As Margaret Morey-Reuner, senior manager of values marketing for Timberland, jokes, “Eighteen months on Facebook seems like 50 years.  What worked for us 18 months ago will almost certainly not deliver the same results today.”

The Virtual Tree Experience

Margaret has first-hand experience with this time-warp dynamic from the Timberland’s Virtual Forest campaign.  In an interview she explained:  In 2000, at the urging of Timberland employees in Asia, CEO Jeff Swartz made a commitment to plant one million trees in China by 2010.  In 2008, Timberland decided to experiment with Facebook to engage consumers in additional tree-planting efforts.  The premise was simple:  for every virtual tree users planted, Timberland would plant a real tree in the Horqin Desert in Inner Mongolia.

Modest Goals

As a first step, Timberland started on Facebook with modest goals – obtaining 30,000 users and 30,000 trees planted.  Unexpectedly, Timberland’s ‘Virtual Forest’ campaign went viral.  Before Timberland knew what had hit them, they had 175,000 users and hundreds of thousands of trees and had to “pause” the campaign to identify more nonprofit organizations with whom they could partner to plant all the donations of trees their users had generated.

A Community In Arms

Putting the campaign on hold caused quite a commotion among Timberland’s Facebook fans spurring angry comments.  To regain the confidence of the community, CEO Jeff Swartz hosted a webcast for the online community to clarify the company’s position and reiterate its commitment to planting 1 million trees in addition to all the incremental real trees for virtual trees, which it ultimately fulfilled.

Launching in a New Landscape

When Timberland created a new Virtual Forest Campaign in 2010 to engage consumers in its reforestation efforts in Haiti.  To better cope, it moved from the original 1:1 ratio of virtual trees planted to actual trees donated to a sliding scale ratio.   Timberland discovered that the Facebook landscape had changed and people were less inclined to participate.  Additionally, many previous Virtual Forest planters were not pleased with the change in the new ratio.  Timberland responded by changing the ratio back to 1:1.  With this simple change, their application install percentage picked up significantly, as did their content shared, according to Morey-Reuner.

The Lesson for You

Facebook is forever iterating, launching new features and layouts and tweaking its content-delivery algorithm. It is challenging but critical for cause marketers to keep pace with these changes.  You don’ t have to become a Facebook scholar – there are plenty of people out there who are more than happy to monitor this social behemoth on your behalf and share their findings with you on blogs like AllFacebook, Mashable and TechCrunch.  Stay informed to stay ahead of the curve.

What’s your experience with cause campaigns on Facebook?  If you’ve been at it for a while, how have things changed?  Sound off in the comments below.

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