State Farm's Effective Use of Facebook Reveal Tabs - State of Chaos
October 31, 2011
If you haven’t seen State Farm’s State of Chaos advertising campaign, you are missing out. It’s a rather ingenious use of social media marketing because if you “Like” State Farm’s page on Facebook, you are in for a treat. After entering your name and address, it uses Google Street View to locate your house, and then you get to watch a video of a giant robot tromping through your neighborhood and blowing up your house. Fun, right? And it’s a great way to get new fans for their Facebook page because you have to like it before you can access the fun video.
State Farm is doing a couple of clever things with this interactive campaign. They are tapping into the popularity of the blockbuster science fiction and fantasy films that have been so prevalent in the past decade, which makes their brand feel younger, hipper, and more accessible. State Farm is also looking to the future by targeting new drivers like teens, most of whom have grown up with and lived most of their lives on various different kinds of social media. Agencies that don’t want to pay for targeted email marketing or want to reach out to a previously untapped audience would do well to take a page from State Farm’s book.
One the key components of the campaign is tying the video element into the Facebook page. Since the video and the code to customize it is hosted on its own domain (www.chaosinyourtown.com) they tied it into the Facebook page through a custom reveal tab. Facebook allows businesses to create customized tabs that display different content based on whether you have ‘liked’ the business’ page or not. State Farm knows that they have built a buzz around this campaign, so they use the reveal page to hide the video content that visitors are looking for. The custom tab clearly lets visitors know that if they ‘like’ the page, they will get to ‘create a blockbuster movie trailer starring your block’. Once you like the page, the tab changes to reveal the entry point for the State of Chaos video creator.
This is a brilliant way to gain fans and ties the company’s Facebook page into their website, television campaign and other marketing efforts online. Everything is designed to drive visitors into the Facebook page where they will ‘like’ the business page. Once you like the page you are open to receiving all of the future Facebook posts made by State Farm and their other fans, further increasing the buzz of the current campaign and the marketability of future campaigns. If your business has a current marketing campaign or if you are planning on starting a marketing campaign be sure that you create a custom reveal page on Facebook that is designed to fully engage your visitors.
