Because that’s what UK-based Lancashire Tea is looking to strike interest in. The tea packager has tapped The Rehab Agency, a marketing consultancy, to produce three designs, which, along with the original graphic, has been put up for a vote on Facebook, according to Packaging News.
Voting goes until December 1, and interestingly enough, once the results are tallied, if a new design wins top honor, Rehab gets paid in full. If the original gets gold, however, Rehab will, according to managing director Janie Ash, receive a “much reduced fee.”
A Small Tea-Drinking Constituency
Of course, Lancashire’s Official Tea Club group isn’t buzzing with activity in light of this month-long event. Its member page touts under 300 people, and just two dozen individuals have bothered to speak their peace about the Rehab project.
But the social networking endeavor is curious nonetheless. Especially when sized up amid other marketing efforts on the social Web.
Not the First Social Marketing Experiment...
You may remember that mega toothpaster Crest partly crowdsourced an ad run on YouTube this summer.
And how about Microsoft’s I’m a PC venture, in which the public was urged to record video confessionals and contribute their efforts to a collage of Windows-themed spots? That turned out to be quite the attention-getter.
Let’s not forget the ever-infamous Facebook Beacon experiment, either, in which users were involved in a social advertising experiment that quickly drew majority ire for its seeming underhandedness.
...Certainly Not the Last
What’s next on the social marketing menu, then? I call for a new design of watermelon. Oval is so over. Square is...square. I pitch another parallelogram. What say you?
