Before dismissing the Facebook color status meme as pointless, consider the results.
Last week, you may have noticed your Facebook status feed was overtaken by one-word color updates from approximately half of your contacts. The female half, to be precise.
It took most of us the better part of a day to figure out what was going on – and if you’re a guy, it may have taken longer to learn the secret.
The Facebook color status meme spread like wildfire via personal messages sent behind the scenes from one cluster of women or girls to the next. The message was simple: change your status to the color of your bra. Don’t tell any guys what’s up. Do this to raise awareness for breast cancer, and share this with all your women friends.
Quietly and with little fanfare (other than the occasional surprise – amidst generic-sounding status updates of “white,” “beige” and “black” – of startling “hot pink trimmed with maribou feathers” from your mother-in-law or a co-worker), this meme virtually took over Facebook. As more people began to catch on, there were small waves of backlash here and there — some female Facebook users refused to participate and dubbed it exploitative, while other Facebookers mocked the meme (some guys even facetiously played along).
The fact is, even if you didn’t participate in the status meme yourself, you probably saw buzz about it from people on your friends list. Naturally, it didn’t take long for online media to notice the trend. Bloggers and online news sites began to cover the phenomenon first, with a Detroit blog among the earliest, followed soon after by social media powerhouse Mashable.
Then came mainstream media coverage — check out this Thoora page for a nice aggregate of all the buzz, both online and off. By this time, critics of the meme were still calling it meaningless and saying it did nothing to raise awareness for breast cancer, but with stories on 65 blogs and 23 news outlets, I beg to differ.
Sure, if the Facebook color status meme had been a campaign executed on behalf of a client, we would have recommended a stronger call to action (e.g., visit this site for more information about breast cancer and what you can do). We also would have ensured consistent messaging in the private emails sent around, so that people would know which breast cancer organization was behind the campaign.
But how can people say the meme was pointless when it generated mainstream news coverage by major TV networks including ABC News and CBS News, along with other credible outlets such as CNN and Newsweek? When we get results like these on behalf of our clients, we are thrilled.
Rather than critiquing the Facebook bra color status meme for being silly or senseless, I look at the results it generated as it streaked across the social sphere and find myself thinking, “How could we pull something like this off for one of our clients?”
What do you think?
Comment by Dominic Litten
Monday 18th - Jan 2010 @ 11:42 AM
The reality is these things spread like wildfire when they:
a) Appeal to the wide audience
b) Requires participation
c) Participation/sharing is fast/easy.
Reverse engineering those features and you can see how it became so successful. Adding CTAs, links, forms or any other steps would have bogged it down and probably decreased it’s “success.”
However, looking at it objectively, if “awareness” was the only goal, how many Americans aren’t aware of breast cancer or been affected by it? Getting mentions/press are always great, and can be measured by existing PR tools, but we need to stop putting “success” into that old context. Even then, people aren’t talking about breast cancer awareness, but just the meme itself.
Great topic, good blog post.
Comment by Lara Kretler
Monday 18th - Jan 2010 @ 1:20 PM
Dominic, thanks for weighing in. I definitely hear where you’re coming from - but I’m still in awe of how fast/far it went. Granted we’re all generally aware of breast cancer in the back of our minds, but what if that goofy meme was all it took to get women or girls thinking about it more proactively, maybe just as a reminder to make an appt to get that little lump looked at?
I’m still filing it away in the drawer of good ideas so I can hopefully put something like this to use for a client someday.
Comment by Rebecca Odell
Monday 18th - Jan 2010 @ 6:43 PM
Lara,
Thank you for your post! I’ve been waiting patiently to read public relations professionals’ thoughts and opinions in regard to the awareness campaign’s success.
I’ll admit: When I first realized women were posting their bra colors, I was slightly appalled that individuals would share such personal information in a public forum. However, once I learned about the campaign through Twitter, I applauded this excellent use of word-of-mouth communications. Although some statuses were distasteful, the cause successfully created awareness.
Overall, I think this is a great example of an inexpensive, measurable and effective tactic. I wonder if organizations will successfully implement similar strategies in the future.
Thanks again,
Rebecca