Capital One, the bank of Visigothic commercial fame, has expanded its social gaming market saturation strategy by expanding beyond its FarmVille holdings into CityVille and other Facebook-based social games to corner the virtual market that remains still relatively untapped. Gamers can visit the Capital One farm, build Capital One banks in their cities, and get livestock or other rewards for liking Capital One on Facebook.
One wonders how effective social game bribery can possibly become, and already a minor backlash has been felt due to businesses employing “brand ambassadors” to blather about some business or other all over Facebook and Twitter. When exploiting a communications platform composed entirely of friends, those individuals will feel rather mistreated if treated as customers.
The ubiquity of the Facebook “like” button has meant that it has cropped up in the most ridiculous of places, including web sites that clients would have no business discussing with their friends or family on social networks. The fact that individuals are quickly becoming marketing tools for businesses, with overt rewards for doing so (a FarmVille goat, for example), is a bizarre evolution of capitalism in which the lives of customers are being exploited as a communications platform for espousing the virtues of some business or another.
Viewers often see right through product placement, with prominently displayed Coca-Cola or Nike logos creating more annoyance than loyalty. Though it is likely still effective, as the ones so annoyed that they will refuse to purchase the product are likely to be few and far between, the endless invasion of advertising into every aspect of one™s existence""to the point that individuals will actually speak to their friends about products simply because a business hired them to do so""is a little absurd.
On the other hand, there is enormous potential to exploit social networks for less annoying purposes, as well as social gaming, as lifestyle trends can more easily be tracked if they exist in a digital environment, and businesses can gain more understanding of the intricacies of their client base and their behaviors if properly studied. Such exploration is likely to be far less of a nuisance (especially if anonymous) than simply bribing someone into clicking the “like” button purely for exploitative marketing purposes.
While Capital One brands appearing on banks in CityVille is unlikely to cause extraordinary consternation for many users, it is not likely to produce any significant shift in customer loyalty; it is doubtful, anyway. On the other hand, a virtual city featuring banks of all sorts could be useful in tracking customer perception of those institutions; if they place a Bank of America virtual location next to a garbage dump, for example, while the credit unions are prominently displayed alongside a beautiful park. Such behavior can be analyzed for useful purposes, whereas it is unlikely that handing out Capital One cows and sheep will be of much use.
It seems that these businesses are merely jumping on board the bandwagons of social networking and gaming simply because they have no idea what to do with them, but know that they can make lots of money with them. Growing pains are likely to continue for quite some time, and the corporatizing of virtual environments will continue. Sooner or later, though (likely when the new generation replaces the old), they™ll figure out something better. But don™t hold your breath.
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