• BusinessWeek, Monday, September 11, 2006 12:15 PM

JP Morgan Chase, Burger King, Apple and Wendy's are among the major marketers that are creating marketing campaigns for social-network sites, like MySpace and Facebook. The goal is to reach young people with messages relevant to their lives. The efforts involve interaction with users, in a memorable way, over time. For example, a MySpace page for the King, the character that appears in Burger King commercials, has amassed more than 120,000 "friends," or fellow MySpace users who opt to associate themselves with his profile. When JP Morgan Chase wanted to attract students to its credit cards, it hired student "ambassadors" at 300 college campuses, using Facebook--which counts millions of students as members--to serve as the centerpiece of the effort. Chase's research shows that young people prefer to interact with brands in familiar surroundings. "When your marketing takes them outside of their environment, it becomes much less effective," says Manning Field, svp of branding and advertising for Chase Card Services.

Read the whole story at BusinessWeek »