But it didn't bring clicks to the website nor goodwill toward the company.
No one remembers who ran the ad. Even if we did, it would only be in a negative light due to a weird and off-putting advertising approach.
But it didn't bring clicks to the website nor goodwill toward the company.
No one remembers who ran the ad. Even if we did, it would only be in a negative light due to a weird and off-putting advertising approach.
Don't get hung up on this specific example of the dating ad.
There's a difference between awareness campaigns and click / conversion campaigns and if there's some ads for a garden chair and your friend is sitting on it you'll definitely remember it more than some random model. Or clothes that are advertised on your body. Not saying that's the future we want, but it would definitely work for a while.
That doesn't come across as any less creepy to the average user: "They stole my friend's likeness to sell me a lawn chair" still feels slimy.
I'm sure the real reason is that Facebook added a poorly thought out feature to their marketing tools around that time, and someone just decided to try it out.
All this talk about how creepy Facebook is and yet most people use it? If Facebook was that creepy it wouldn't be a trillion dollar company. So they saw a "creepy" ad. They went "haha" or whatever and then kept using it. I mean how would you even quantify that the feature was "poorly thought out" or "slimy" at that point? If that was the case why didn't the user log off and never come back? Then at least Facebook would have a signal to work with.
Sometimes people really miss the forest for the trees. Most people actually like Facebook. If you can't wrap your head around that you have to accept you are distinct from the typical consumer. A trillion dollars is not made by appealing to the margins. If Facebook really sucked so bad everyone would log off.
Instead of another boring Facebook sucks comment why don't you ask your sibling why they didn't stop interacting with the website after that? You would probably learn more about the world doing that than trying to speculate about marketing tool features at a company you don't work for.