Marketing win: If you aren't paying for the product you are _part of_ the product

As we dragged our tired asses out of the royal show last night, there was an AFL "game"where kids were jumping into a foam pit, catching a ball. It looked free and then Jonah came back saying "mum you have to fill something in". Of course.

After a bit of a process, Jonah got to jump for the ball, and then got a photo printed.

Cool.

Then on the way home, Sylv got an email with this link which has the photo plus a whole bunch of advertising. Fair deal.

But the true brilliance is that when I looked at Facebook this morning, the link was there. It already had one like. It will get a few shares. Jonah was one of twenty kids in the fifteen minutes we were there at 8.30pm on the first day. So the face of the kid may change, but the ad itself might get a good reach.

Very clever. It goes someway to a comment (reportedly) made by Mark Zuckerberg - "if you're not paying for the product, you are the product". Well, in this case "part of" the product.

And equally as important. Advertising is about exchange of value - a company gets advertising results by providing something of value to us. In the commercial media model a consumer would get "free content" in exchange for "eyeballs on an ad". This model has the consumer getting a cool, personalized pic in exchange for being a "node" of advertising for Toyota. Clever and fair, I think.

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