• by David Berkowitz , March 9, 2010

What would a brand need to give you to become a fan of their page on Facebook? A free hamburger? A pair of underwear? Virtual cash to support your virtual farm?

These are all real examples. T.G.I. Friday's gave out the burgers in September 2009. Victoria's Secret first gave away panties in June 2009, and then it offered fans two pairs of underwear in September to celebrate getting 2 million fans. Just last week, Microsoft ponied up (pun intended) 3 Farm Cash, the virtual currency of Facebook's leading application FarmVille, to players who became a fan of Bing.

On the surface, it works. Bing grew its fan count from over 100,000 to over 500,000 overnight with the one-day promotion March 2, and it now has 593,000 fans, indicating continued residual growth. By comparison, Google has 529,000 fans. Microsoft's Bing only needs another 18,000 fans to overtake Chandler Bing (of "Friends" fame), and the page is now far more popular than "I just realized that Bing stands for ‘Because Its Not Google'" with its 258,000 fans. So it was successful, right?

This is the question marketers need to ask. Was it a success? And then you can break it down further - in what ways was it successful, and in what ways wasn't it? I haven't seen the press tackle these questions. Even a story yesterday from Silicon Alley Insider, a publication that makes a sport of ripping into large tech and media companies, treated it with kid gloves.

There are several reasons Microsoft should celebrate:

1) The creative in FarmVille was beautiful, showing a massive farm with Bing's logo, instantly visible in the game.

2) Zynga, the company behind FarmVille, made it relevant for its audience, with a prominent call to "become a fan," and then the hook to "get fun FarmVille tips on Bing now."

3) Microsoft "owns" these fans now. It can directly communicate with nearly 500,000 more people than it could at the start of last week. That's tremendous.

4) Microsoft has cash to burn. When you're sitting on billions of dollars, paying a few million bucks for this kind of promotion might be a relatively good use of ad spending. The cost of this promotion wasn't disclosed and I know it wasn't anywhere near that ballpark, but the one-day spend undoubtedly trumped what most marketers spend on social media in a year.

5) The press value alone probably helped with some of the incremental fan gains, and its public relations team can add the media love to their clip files. In this bizarre world where Microsoft is the David to Google's Goliath (or "The Hurt Locker" to their "Avatar"), it's going to get the ink.

Yet the promotion's hardly perfect. There are several reasons why this might not be the best use of marketing dollars:

1) Die-hard fans will do anything for virtual cash. Zynga games often have two kinds of currency: the kind you earn by playing the game and the even more special currency you have to pay for. There are items and other in-game boosts you can only get with that special currency. As a Mafia Wars player for about a year now, I'd become a fan of Stalin for Godfather points. Getting FarmVille players to become a fan of an innocuous brand like Bing is a cinch when you're dangling Farm Cash. Without a doubt, these same people would become a fan of Google, Yahoo, Apple, the Burlington Chamber of Commerce, hedge funds, or the Senate's latest version of health care legislation (hey, Obama, you might want to try that). It doesn't mean they're fans.

2) A week later, the vast majority of comments from fans on Bing's page are still about FarmVille. Consider the latest post from Bing about a maps app. The first ten comments are mostly relevant, though largely negative. And then the FarmVille comments come: "I just joined this group for the FV$." "I got my 3 FV dollars - and what other search engine offers you anything? So thank you to Bing!" "My son got his fv cash, but I didn't."Its wall is also full of fan posts such as, "Need some farmcash ASAP thanks in advance." These will drop off in time, but it's doubtful that these FarmVille players will ever contribute meaningfully to Bing's Facebook presence.

3) Another way to look at engagement is by the number of people who "like" a post. Bing's two official Facebook updates since the FarmVille promotion garnered about 150 likes. Bing's post about the FarmVille campaign garnered 1,280 likes. And before that? It's a mixed bag. A post about someone from Bing riding a mechanical bull in Dallas got 325 likes - and that was when it had 117,000 fans, according to All Facebook. Typically, posts netted around 50 to 100 likes - and occasionally far more, such as a Christmas update with 222 likes. Microsoft will have to figure out what resonates with the new crop of Bing fans now that they're overwhelmingly FarmVille fans too (do they search for virtual animal husbandry?). Or perhaps Bing will fare better letting that FarmVille contingent remain a fallow fan field, while continuing to reap the fruit of the organic Bing fans.

All in all, size only matters so much. Bing could have had a successful page with 10,000 fans if they were passionate users who could spread Microsoft's messaging further, or Bing could buy 10 million fans that give Microsoft nothing but bragging rights.

My final recommendation: next time, run the promotion in Mafia Wars for 100 Godfather points, and I'll be Bing's biggest fan in the whole wide world. Burlington Chamber of Commerce, that goes for you too.