Unilever is switching down its social media activity. This to focus more on creating fans by word of mouth. Because the fans on facebook are not all real friends but often people that liked the page for competitions and other things like that.https://consumervaluecreation.wordpress.com/wp-admin/post-new.php
Is this a smart move? I think they got a point. I also liked some pages in the past because I could win something there or just for something interesting. So shifting the focus more to word of mouth creation sounds good. But I don’t think they should stop with social media. Because it is important in creating the word of mouth that Unilever wants to create. So they should not stop with social media but shift their focus on the social media. It is a trend that will stay and otherwise Unilever will lose on a key playground for the future.
A fun example of good brand promotion is this:
http://www.culy.nl/inspiratie/facebook-humor-tussen-heineken-en-douwe-egberts/
It is in dutch, but basically what happened was that Heineken started with an ad of a heineken beer that looks like a coffee cup. And asked who wanted to drink, Douwe Egberts(coffee company) responded with: I will!. And so multiple companies started with reactions where they used their brands to suggest things related to the topic. I thought it was fun and a good way to raise brand awareness.
Cyriel de Bruijn
Consumer Value Creation 