Building a Brand with Widgets

The customizable bits of software on Facebook and other social networking sites are the latest trend in viral marketing. But are widgets here to stay?

by Rachael King

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The cards were stacked against A&E Television Network as it tried to generate positive buzz about its new series, Parking Wars. For one, it's a reality show about meter readers. Two, the show doesn't feature celebrities. "We thought if we could find a clever way of increasing consumer interaction with the concept behind the show that we would increase curiosity in the show itself," says Lori Peterzell, A&E's vice-president for consumer marketing.

So A&E hired area/code, a multimedia game developer, to build an online game based on Parking Wars. Played on the social network Facebook, the game has users park virtual cars on friends' profile pages, or "streets," while slapping tickets on cars parked on their own page and avoiding tickets themselves.

Grand Theft Auto it's not. What makes Parking Wars unique is how it's distributed. The game is passed from one person to the next by way of widgets, small bundles of software that users can download, customize, and forward to a single pal or an entire contact list with the click of a mouse. Widgets like Parking Wars, which are designed for a specific social networking site, are typically referred to as applications. Since its Dec. 17 introduction, Parking Wars has attracted more than 198,000 unique users, many of them repeat players, and generated more than 45 million page views.

Raising Brand Awareness

"It's surpassing our expectations," Peterzell says. A growing number of companies hope they'll be wowed by widgets, too. Electronic Arts (ERTS), Viacom's (VIA) Paramount Pictures, Sony Pictures, Gap (GPS), Hewlett-Packard (HPQ), Hallmark, and Blockbuster (BBI) are among the businesses hoping to spread a marketing message or raise brand awareness through these modules of content used by millions of social network users to customize profiles or communicate with friends.

Interest in widgets is rising as marketers become disaffected by other methods of online advertising, especially on social networks. Google (GOOG) executives said in January they're not generating as much revenue as expected (BusinessWeek.com, 1/31/08) from placing ads on News Corp.'s (NWS) MySpace.

Some marketers say widgets may do a better job engaging users than, say, so-called banner ads emblazoned across the sides of social network profiles. "Content and functionality are the new creativity—it's not about whether you have a whiz-bang rich media banner running," says Andy Bateman, CEO of brand consultancy Interbrand New York. "Are you doing something that's actually helpful and useful to people?"

Some Facebook Campaigns Have Fizzled

There's plenty of anecdotal success. Sony Pictures promoted its Resident Evil zombie flick by running a sweepstakes in conjunction with Rock You's popular Zombies application, which lets people send virtual zombies to bite their friends. Sony Pictures had hoped 10,000 people would sign up for its contest, and instead got 1 million takers, says RockYou CEO Lance Tokuda.