Stop Bribing Your Customers

Why do people think it’s a good idea to try and bribe consumers to talk about them in social media?

I can’t believe this crazy case study I read about recently.

It’s for a company called One Piece. They did a pop-up store opening in New York City and Soho I believe. One Piece is actually a company that makes gourmet, fashionable onesies, like adult onesies. Full body pajamas, but designer stylish. I know, I think it’s a New York thing.

That’s not really the point.

I’m not anti-onesie necessarily, but I am very much anti their launch strategy. They created a program they call “social currency,” and the deal is you come into their popup store and you can connect your Facebook account, your Twitter account, your LinkedIn account, your Pinterest account, your Instagram account, etc., and based on the number of followers you have, if you mention the fact that you’re at their popup store, they will take dollars off your purchase.

For every 500 followers you have, they’ll give you a dollar off, up to a maximum of $20, which is 10,000 followers for those of you doing the math at home.

This is absurd. Why would you need to pay costumers a dollar for every 500 fans or connections they have and then basically bribe them to create social media about your company?

Look, this is a perfect example of what we fall into all the time, which is confusing audience and influence.

Just because someone walks in your door and is like, “Hey, awesome, gourmet onesie,” and they want to tweet about it and they’ve got a few followers, does not mean that person is influential in the least about the subject of gourmet onesies.

It doesn’t mean that anybody is going to necessarily see that tweet or Facebook post or Instagram photo or whatever, and it most certainly doesn’t mean that anybody who does receive that content is going to be persuaded by the person who created that content.

Quit worrying about audience and focus on actual influence and actual advocacy.

Here’s what you should do OnePiece. Here’s what you should do, anybody in the same circumstance.

If you’re in a meeting right now and thinking, “Hey, we should bribe people to do social media about us,” no you shouldn’t.

What you should do is instead create the kind of experiences and products that people actually want to create content about.

If you do something that is useful, if you create utility, if you delight people, if you give them something that they actually care about, they’ll go ahead and create social media without getting $1 off.

It’s sad. It’s ridiculous, and it’s not going to work.

Or maybe it is going to work, because of all the free media coverage of a ridiculous stunt like this.

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